


Between Then and Now

by DarkBlueChild



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Barebacking, Bottom Dean, Cabin Fic, First Time, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Rough Sex, Sibling Incest, Visions, slight case fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-06-14
Updated: 2020-03-09
Packaged: 2020-05-07 20:48:24
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 4
Words: 28,537
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19217263
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DarkBlueChild/pseuds/DarkBlueChild
Summary: A hunt strands the brothers in a cabin in the Colorado mountains. As they’re waiting for another full moon to rise Sam starts having visions of his and Dean’s far future. That they’re living in some strange secret society type of bunker pales in comparison to the fact that they’re obviously lovers. Dean believes someone is forcing projections onto his brother, but Sam is not so sure that what he’s seeing is fake. The three weeks left on the clock until the monster strikes again should, in theory, be enough for them to figure out what’s going on.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The story takes place a few months after season 2 and pretends Dean’s demon deal never happened.

 

“Can we get back to the part where we were _fucking_?” Dean barks out at Sam, barely believing they’re in a situation where he has to say such a screwed up thing to his baby brother.

The morning sunlight is hitting the window of their shared bedroom directly, the wispy drapes not standing a chance against it as it blares straight into Dean’s eyes while he digs through Sam’s duffle for something clean and wearable in the mountain hideout. He seriously needs to invest into a pair of sweats of his own instead of constantly borrowing Sam’s overlarge ones that always threaten to slip down his hips whenever he has to crouch or walk at a slightly brisker pace.

“Because I _really_ don’t care about the decor of the place,” he adds, volume rising with each syllable until he’s on the border of outright yelling.

He shuffles into the stolen pair of pants – Sam’s oldest one that’s slightly smaller than the rest of them - the too fast and jerky movements almost sending him ass-first onto the polished oakwood floor. 

It’s too damn early in the morning for all that’s been happening. He runs shaky fingers through sleep-tussled spikes and takes a deep, steadying breath. The fresh mountain air coming through the open window is still a bit on the chilly side even though they’re well into the summer, forcing gooseflesh from the top of Dean’s head all the way to the pale little hairs on his clenched knuckles.

They somehow – idiotically - managed to run out of coffee, of all things, as Sam announced when he returned from the kitchen to their bedroom, and the notion that his current sluggishness isn’t going to get an instant fix is doing the opposite of helping. With the disturbingly pornographic show Sam put on in his sleep (much to Dean’s horror) before jerking awake like a madman at the very crack of dawn, it’s really not the start of a good day. 

Not by a mile.

A quick glance in his brother’s direction before digging into his own duffle for a clean shirt rewards Dean with the sight of Sam’s hazel eyes glued to his naked chest, pouty lips hanging open like the kid’s stuck somewhere between dread and bewilderment. He’s standing across the room from Dean, already dressed in clothes that comfortably fit him, hiking shoes included in the outfit instead of the blister-inducing army boots Dean’s forced to wear because forethought is a foreign word in his dictionary.

The bastard.

His eyes are roaming Dean’s exposed skin like they’re in search of something that’s not actually there while looking like his brain’s having a hard time comprehending the absence.

“Dude, _what?”_ Dean demands, annoyed and uncomfortable with being gawked at by Sam so soon after what had happened - after not being able to shake Sam awake for much longer than could technically be considered normal, all while his brother moaned his name in ecstasy and broke himself out of the depth of his dream only _after_ his rock-hard dick spent half a load in his underwear and sent the other half flying in thick, white ribbons all over the younger man’s bare chest once the lollipop-red head of his throbbing cock peeked out of the confines of the boxer briefs.

Talk about nightmare fuel.

Sam doesn’t flinch at the inquiry, doesn’t even seem to register it _,_ and a mantra consisting solely of the word _‘fuck’_ loops itself in Dean’s mind, because things have gotten out of hand way too fucking quick. He doesn’t like where all this is going, not one bit.

If Sam would only stop focusing on how well stacked the library was and how futuristic-looking the gadgets were, Dean would be able to successfully steer the conversation back to the _incest_ that clearly debunks Sam’s belief that he’s had a vision and not just a wake-you-up-screaming type of nightmare.

Not that Sam woke up screaming in _that_ way.

If only _._

Another glance at Sam’s still slightly heaving chest and shaking hands tells Dean that his brother is clearly reading way too much into what must have been just a dream. A hyper-realistic one, true, but hell, _details._

“Sam, if your vision ended with me bouncing on your balls and begging you to give me the second load of the day, then it was clearly _not_ a vision,” Dean tries to reason with his brother, keeping his voice as controlled as possible instead of blowing a gasket over his own words.

Sam grimaces and flinches in a way that would give an older man some serious whiplash.

“Do we know anything about the Fuath?” Sam asks in a voice laced with frustration, ignoring what Dean had said to him, pissed off at his brother’s one-track mind.

“The _what_?” Dean asks as a deep, puzzled frown sets on his handsome features.

“Fuath,” Sam repeats. “Evil Scottish fairies. They used to sink boats,” Sam murmurs with an exhale of breath, running a hand over the itchy stubble coating his cheeks, not meeting Dean’s eyes.

“Never heard of them,” Dean replies, warily, already having a pretty good idea where Sam’s going with this.

“Me neither. That is, until I’ve read about them in that library last night. Or, I guess, roughly a decade from now,” Sam says bitterly and moves towards the window, turning his back to Dean and making a point of staring at the mountain peaks in the distance.  

“Sam, for fuck's sake, it was just a dream! You weren’t in any goddamned library,” Dean chastises, hands waving a gesture of general disbelief, because why does this even need explaining? “You were in bed with me, snoring too loud but otherwise sleeping like a fucking cherub!” he keeps on stubbornly insisting.

“Call Bobby, then,” Sam says, sharp voice traveling down the slope under their window and getting lost in the abundance of trees surrounding the cabin.

“What the fuck for?” Dean protests weakly, even though he knows exactly what Sam’s aiming at. That’s all they need, actually _telling_ somebody about this damned mess.

“To ask him if he knows about these creatures,” Sam chides like it was supposed to be obvious and Dean’s nerves seriously fray at that.

“If he doesn’t and can’t find anything on them, then I’ll admit that it was probably a dream,” Sam continues, consciously reining in some of the snark. “But if they do turn out to be real, then the dream _has_ to be a vision,” he insists. “Fuath are rare, they can be found exclusively in the Scottish highlands. It can’t be info I stumbled upon in Dad’s diary or somewhere randomly and forgot about. The book I read it from is kept in a fucking climate-controlled room, the pages were almost crumbling. Bobby will have a bitch of a time searching for them. They’re water spirits, mean as hell, and steel and sunlight kill them,” he lists off determinedly.

Dean lowers his gaze to the floor as he rests his hands on his hips, feeling more tired than he has in a long time.

It’s not that he doesn’t get it. Sam’s cheeks are blazing red; he’s looking like he wants to be anywhere but in the room with his big brother, but Dean knows what it’s like to have an unbearable itch that just _needs_ scratching, even at the cost of having your own blood under your fingernails afterwards.

He also knows Sam’s hiding something. Something big and nasty that he’d seen in the dream. Something he doesn’t want to happen; to be true. As cool as the bunker sounds and as disturbing as the rest of it is, Dean knows his brother’s tells much too well to be fooled into thinking that it’s just dreaming of incest that’s bothering Sammy. Sure, he admitted the dreamland filth because the show he’d put on really needed explaining, but there’s definitely more than he’s been telling him.

Imagined, _not_ real, but there’s still more.

Unfortunately, Sam’s dug his heels in, and will now need actual ‘proof’ that the dream is what Dean’s been telling him it is all along – _just_ a dream.

Dean sighs heavily, shutting eyelids that are too heavy for a morning after a good night’s sleep.

He’s always been one to indulge his brother’s needs and wishes whenever he could, and in this situation it won’t cost him more than a short phone call. It’s Bobby that’ll have to bear the brunt of it, but they’ll make it up to the man, one way or another.   

“You gonna calm down if I call the old man?” Dean asks in a voice that conveys that it’s fucking _mandatory_ for Sam to get a grip on himself if he wants Dean calling in the favor.

“It’ll be a start,” Sam answers softly, the sunlight drawing out the blue in his hazel eyes and adding to the sadness and sincerity Dean sees there.

It hits Dean like a fist to the gut to see how absolutely raw and unhinged Sam currently is, carrying the frenzied edge, and Dean just wishes he knew what was bothering him this much. He walks across the bedroom in four long strides and settles behind his brother’s back, leaning his forehead down to rest it at the younger man’s neck, hands hanging clenched by his sides, waiting for Sam to invite his touch if he desires the comfort of it.

Sam releases a deep breath at the soothing contact and leans his entire body back after only a moment of reluctance. 

They always cling to one another when things get truly bad; they have done so since they were little children, but this is the first time since probably Sam hitting the peak of puberty and going through the constant-boners phase that an embrace feels awkward. They don’t separate for a while, but it’s as if the little air that’s left between their bodies is buzzing uncomfortably, and neither of them can deny it.    

_It was just a dream,_ Dean repeats to himself as he gingerly lifts his arms to circle them around Sam’s middle, burying his face in Sam’s shoulder and inhaling the rich aroma of old parchment, mint toothpaste and pinewood; a scent that is all _Sammy_.

“It can’t be real,” he whispers solemnly, as if forcing the words to be a truth if he just hits the intonation right.

“I know,” Sam whispers back comfortingly, but the words have the taste of a lie.

~*~*~*~*~

The cabin is newly built and finely appointed. It would have been out of Sam and Dean’s price range, if not for the recent murders committed in it.

The main-level deck wraps around three sides of the structure, offering rocking chairs and a view of untouched nature, aspen trees all around, with a busy beaver pond only a short walk ahead. The inside is small, able to comfortably accommodate only four people, but the living room and dining area have a soaring cathedral ceiling with large windows that make the space feel as open and sunny as is architecturally possible. There are two bedrooms upstairs, but one of them still hasn’t recovered from being a blood-smeared crime scene, and is currently out of use. 

It’s been five months since they’ve made dust out of Yellow Eyes and saw their father’s soul ascend to Heaven. Five months is how long it took them to travel away from the soggy snow they encountered in Maine, where they went to deal with a pixie infestation, to the glory that is late summer in Colorado. Sam had drawn the path they’d taken on one of the maps Dean keeps in the glove compartment, sketching a wobbling, overlapping line that resembles a tangle of headphone wires.

They received info about the Colorado hunt on a rain-blurred Saturday near St. Paul, Nebraska, when Bobby called to check up on them and share gossip about a creature various hunters have been failing to catch for nearly a year, one whose pattern involved the lunar cycle and a few neighboring cabins in the Rockies. Bobby feigned haphazardness when he added _“you boys could take it, in case you might be up for a change of routine”,_ knowing full well that getting off the damned road was exactly what his boys needed, then chuckled fondly after hearing them exchange a few muffled words and jump on the proposition like a duck on a junebug.

They had twelve successful ‘caught it from a newspaper’ type of hunts tucked under their belts – which would probably turn out to be record breaking, if the hunting community kept any sort of track - but the aimless life on the road took its toll, wore them out, and they needed a break from greasy diner food and waking up in different beds every couple of days. 

Granted, taking a break for the Winchesters wasn’t equivalent to putting hunting on hold, it just meant snatching one of those long-ass hunts, the kind Dad always used to take so that they could stay put in one place for long enough to feel like they were getting a proper education.

So even though it wasn’t exactly a search for peace that brought them to the Summit Watch cabin, and even though they both had unspoken fear crawling through their spines that even just a day of playing bait in the woodland version of godfuck-nowhere would have them clawing each other’s eyes out, five days have come and gone without incident.

Sam’s been making sure to keep their schedule busy, properly tiring them out during the day so that Dean wouldn’t have any energy left for bitching about there being no bars around by the time the evenings set. By now he’s managed to drag Dean along for three successful hikes and one mildly interesting mine tour. With the barbecuing, roasting marshmallows over the fire pit and kayaking Sam had planned for some time next week, their stay in the Summit Watch cabin felt like a proper vacation.

Up until the morning of day six, that is, when Dean woke up to the sounds of his sweaty baby brother panting and writhing in his sleep, Winchester bad luck finally catching up with them in the green silence of the mountains and striking with a vengeance. 

They’re having good weather; the air on the deck is warm and dry now that the sun had ample time to warm it up, the leaves of trees and the beaver pond in the distance glistening in its light. The deck’s roof is doing a fine job hiding the aggravated brothers from the persistent fireball in the sky.

Sam’s laying on one of the outdoor couches, laptop on his lap, lean body sunk into the heavily padded cushions while Dean stands by the railing, resting his elbows on it, head hung low as he stares at the ground below.

The cigarette lays in Dean’s hand idly, burned down almost to the butt, though Dean’s taken only two drags from it. He’s far from being a smoker, but he picked up their Dad’s nervous habit of buying a pack and half-heartedly lighting up a few smokes every couple of months, whenever a hunt proved to be more complicated than expected.  

“What did Bobby say?” Sam inquires, still clicking away on the keyboard in search of any info on his dreamland creatures. So far he’s found nothing, but that doesn’t come as a surprise.

Dean casts his brother an annoyed look, stubbing out the cigarette in the paw-shaped ashtray he brought out from the kitchen. “He’s never heard of them,” he answers, turning his body towards Sam, shooting him a pointed look with his mouth drawn prissily in a tight line that conveys the _I’ve told you so_ message loud and clear.

Sam nods pensively, shifting his attention back to the screen. So far the search parameters for ‘Scottish water spirits’ have only rewarded him with Scotch recommendations and brewing process descriptions.

“Sammy,” Dean grinds out in frustration, fingers itching with desire to light up another cigarette, “what are you not telling me?”

Sam stares at the laptop for a moment longer, contemplating his response before shutting the heavy thing and setting it aside on the coffee table. He sits upright, leaning his forearms on the spread of his knees and cradles his face in his large hands, strands of chestnut-colored hair falling across his fingers.

Dean can’t help but think how ridiculous they both are for making avoiding eye-contact the theme of the day. The moment one of them shifts his focus on the other, the other immediately finds a way to turn away, and it just keeps on going in a vicious circle. He’d smile, if only Sam wasn’t making things so serious and grim.

“You know, I once had a dream about Angelina Jolie begging me to come all over her face. You think there might still be hope?” he tries teasing, but Sam doesn’t join in on the joke.

“You know this is different,” he instead snaps at Dean for his efforts.

“The hell I do, Sammy. But what I _do_ know is that you’ll feel real stupid when nothing comes out of it. I mean, _fuck_ , wasn’t this supposed to be a vacation? You gonna turn it into a hunt over a _dream_?”

Dean swallows hard, boot-clad foot kicking at the rail for the sole unsatisfactory reward of dull pain in his toes. He’s slowly getting on board with the fact that this is actually going to be a big thing now, but that doesn’t mean he plans to go down without a fight.

“Dude, it was a hunt from the beginning,” Sam throws back at his brother, fuming at the words.

This whole thing was a concession, Sam yielding to Dean’s stubbornness. What Sam wanted was to go to some holiday resort and stay there until both of them were properly relaxed, but Dean fought him tooth and nail on that. His idea of relaxing was just _not hunting for a while_ instead of _making a thing of it,_ as he accused his brother grouchily. And that’s how this happened – three weeks of downtime in pleasant surroundings while the fact that they’re in a monster’s territory looms over them as they wait for the damned thing to pop up again. 

“No,” Dean replies, amping self-righteousness up to the max, “we’ll be on a hunt three weeks from now, when whatever this werewolf hybrid thing is tries to go on another joyride. Until then, it’s supposed to be a goddamned vacation. One _you_ insisted on,” he accuses spitefully, like he wasn’t all for it as well.

“Well, I’m sorry! But this is the way things are now, and I don’t know what you think I can do about it.”

“Look at me, for starters,” he says and doesn’t continue until Sam reluctantly locks his gaze with Dean's. “It’s simple. I want you to forget about it,” he fixes his brother with a heavy stare, but he knows it’s a lost cause.

“I can’t,” Sam protests, sighing heavily.

He gets up from his seat and walks over the edge of the deck to stand by his brother, picking up the box of cigarettes and lighting one up for himself. Dean frowns at the action, having seen his brother light up only two or three times in his entire life, but refrains from commenting on the cancerous swirls of smoke escaping his brother’s nose and lips.

“It was too real. It was different from the rest of the visions I’ve had, I admit that, but I also know that it _was_ one. It’s probably because Yellow Eyes is toast-” he tries to explain, but Dean’s just about had enough of beating around the bush and ignoring the gigantic red flag that _should_ have debunked all of this from the very beginning. 

Dean turns at his brother then, grabbing onto the wide set of shoulders and shaking them, pushing all of his anger and desperation into the tight grip.

“Don’t you understand that there’s not a chance in hell I would ever – _ever -_ let you bend me over? Let alone fucking beg for it,” he bites the words out, quiet and bitter, disappointment at his brother wreaking havoc through him for being forced to ask out loud what is probably the most fucked up question he will ever utter in his life.

And Sam can’t help it at that point, not when Dean’s saying shit like that to him; he can’t fight off the still fresh image of kiss-bitten lips panting mere inches above his own as the older, sweaty and naked version of Dean straddled his lap with an obscene lack of shame and impaled his tight, lubed-up hole on Sam’s cock in a single motion, then rode it mercilessly, grinding himself on it and milking Sam until he came so hard and rough inside of his brother that come probably _leaked_ down Dean's thighs by the time they disentangled themselves.   

So yeah, he knows that Dean will not only ask for it but love it.

But Dean’s coping mechanism of acting like it’s all somehow Sam’s fault - his desire even - is seriously starting to grate.

“Is that why you think I’m pushing it, Dean? Do you think that I want that, that I have an agenda? Is that what this is about?” Sam spits the words out as if they were venom, pinning Dean down with a hard look.

“No,” Dean hisses, clearly taken aback by the accusations.

And how the hell did Sam get to that conclusion instead of getting the point Dean was trying to make?

Unless it's what he…

No - _hell no._

He’s not even gonna go there.

“Well good,” Sam interrupts the disturbing train of thought. “Glad to know we’re on the same page, at least concerning that. Now, if you would just focus on what’s actually important-”

“And what would that be, Sammy? Evil Scottish leprechauns?”

“The fact that there used to be a secret society who dealt with all of America’s supernatural crap before the current hunter’s grid was set up, and we’ll one day take over their old headquarters!”

Dean scoffs, throwing his hands in the air again in a gesture of utter disbelief.

“Not good enough for you? Okay. Then how ‘bout the fact that there’s a library somewhere out there that’s bigger than five of these cabins combined, with books dedicated exclusively to the supernatural. Did you know that it’s not only fire that kills a Wendigo? A blended-metal bullet, brass, more precisely, does the trick just as well. And then there’s the War Room, the armory, a garage with classics I’d be willing to bet you’d give your left testicle for, showers with water pressure you’ll never shut up about. Want me to continue?”

Dean _doesn’t_ want him to continue. His vision fades a bit, black spots taking it over and body halfway on the track to swaying, and he actually has to lean back into the railing for support.

A lonesome cloud suddenly makes its way in front of the sun, taking away a good portion of its intensity and providing for a gloomy, much more accurate atmosphere for the conversation they’re having.

“And how do you see it happening?” he asks in a tone of voice that all but admits defeat, driving both hands through his short, dirty-blond hair in an effort to soothe his nerves.

“I don’t. But I’ve got a feeling I’ll be seeing more of it tonight,” Sam answers, this time in an uncertain, almost timid voice.

If Dean believed that the tension in the air has reached its maximum, he’s been a fool for thinking it. He shoots Sam an incredulous look, not entirely sure what to make of his brother’s words.                                                           

“Yeah. That’s what I was trying to tell you before,” Sam answers Dean's wide-eyed silence, shuffling his feet nervously, hopeful still that there’s a way to get Dean to come around. “There’s no more demonic influence. And if I’m right, then this is the way my visions are naturally supposed to play out, without the splitting headaches and looking like an amateur’s shaky-cam montage.”

Sam watches Dean’s face change as he ponders at the words, shifting from confusion to a worried frown and then into hopefulness in quick succession, and it wasn’t the reaction Sam was expecting.

“That just might be it,” Dean declares, as if he’s had an epiphany. “Not demons, but someone _else_ is definitely fucking with your head. That’s the only explanation for what you’ve seen.”

Sam groans, feeling both their figurative horns sharpen from all the head-butting they’ve been doing from the moment the sun went up and he stupidly blurted out the contents of the strange vision to his brother. He’s about to protest, but Dean sees it coming from a mile away and interrupts with an olive branch.

“How ‘bout this. We ward the cabin with just about everything we know that interferes with magic and see how the night goes?” he asks, face beaming with that hopeful, obnoxious smile of his that screams of an agenda that Sam’s rarely ever been able to say no to.

“Fine,” Sam grunts begrudgingly, even though he has to agree that it’s a good compromise.

He turns to mirror Dean’s position, back leaning on the railing, shuffling his feet and eventually starting to push dry branches off the edge of the deck with the heel of his foot. He makes a mental note to get the broomstick from the closet and sweep up the place before it starts looking like an abandoned shed. Stubbing out the cigarette he only took the first drag from, he thinks about Dean’s suggestion, knowing full well that painting sigils and hanging trinkets will only be a waste of time, but for the sake of peace it has to be done.

But what merit does his brother think anyone could gain from showing Sam a fake future that’s at least a decade away, and one so weird at that?

Absolutely no one is the correct answer, but trust Dean to think _Sam_ is the stubborn one.

And it’s not like he’s not freaked out about it as well; it’s just that the whole package is too overwhelming and he, as the one who actually experienced it, can’t latch onto just one single aspect like Dean can, even though them fucking is the obvious one to flip his shit over.

It’s a future in which their too intense, overly codependent brotherly love has twisted itself into something almost unspeakable, but it’s also a _good_ one. Both of them are alive, for one. That’s not how Sam ever expected things would play out, he admits to himself privately. And also, both of them being genuinely content and happy are feelings Sam believed they had both given up for good once it became clear that hunters is all they were ever going to be.

As if the weather knew that Sam’s heavy sigh is its cue for action, it’s that very moment that the cloud moves away and uncloaks the sun, bringing back its cheerful shine and warmth, and the change in atmosphere is emblematic enough for both of them to take it a sign and allow their hearts to lighten, if only a bit.  

“I’mma cook us some lunch now,” Dean says as another peace offering, pushing off the rail and moving towards the entrance of their cabin. “Could you drive into town and get us coffee? We’re also running low on tomatoes and beer.”

“Sure,” Sam nods, hearing metal jingling and catching the Impala’s keys midair without turning his head.

He hears Dean chuckle softly before the door closes, the gentle rustle of leaves and birdsong struggling to fill in the silence he left behind. Gravel crunches under Sam’s feet as he walks over to the Impala, its impressive engine rumbling like the roar of a lion once the key in the ignition has been turned.

After twenty-four years of being mother-henned by his older brother, Sam knows he should be used to Dean being able to read his moods with the accuracy of a single-ion optical clock, but it still never ceases to amaze him. Time on his own is what he desired most in this moment, not having Dean’s ability to sweep unpleasantness under the rug at a moment's notice and act like status quo is unbroken. Dean knew that, and that’s why he generously offered an out in the form of throwing Baby’s keys straight at the back of his baby brother’s head. The still fresh memory brings a small smile back to Sam’s face.

But try as he might, he can’t stop re-examining the details of what he’s seen in his sleep, not even when presented with the vastness of one of America’s most beautiful and breathtaking jewels as a distraction.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so much for reading. If you like the beginning of this story and would like for me to continue, please let me know! Nothing serves as better fuel than reviews, and if you’ve got criticism (as long as it’s constructive) please don’t hesitate to let me know how you think I could improve the overall reading experience! =)


	2. Chapter 2

Sam’s vision starts out simple – as an actual dream.

He’s riding a horse across a sea of tall grass, the mare’s coat glistening as it catches the sunlight, though the color of the hide is too crimson to be natural - a deep, flaming red, in real life usually only found on women that don’t mind paying extra for the skilled hairdresser.

But this is only a dream, so Sam finds none of it unusual.

The mare gallops hard and fast, frantic even, without any input from Sam for her to do so. Froth gathers across her teeth and in the corners of her mouth, spilling over the lips and catching on her chest and shins. Her eyes are open maddeningly wide and have not once left the spot in the far distance where whatever her destination is lies.

Still, Sam finds none of it unusual.

The mare’s hooves thud across the soft ground, sharp blades of grass whipping at her haunches cruelly, until the plane gradually starts filling with elm, cottonwood and ash, eventually becoming a forest too dark and dense for her to keep up the nigh-suicidal pace.

That eerie feeling that something might be off crawls over Sam’s skin then, in the same fashion one feels tickling in the back of the throat when one’s about to become ill. He doesn’t know much about horses, but it doesn’t require  _his_  smarts to realize that no horse in its right mind would gallop straight into thickening woods at full speed like this.

Granted, the mare slows down when the ferns and roots of trees coating the forest floor start catching at her legs every few steps. The deceleration allows Sam to vaguely start recognizing the landscape as Kansas even though he’s never seen this forest before, let alone stepped foot in it, and the weirdness scale shifts its hand from yellow to a burned orange.

But that’s not nearly enough to set the siren off in the land of dreams.

Even through coarse denim, Sam can feel the mare’s heat and sweat that’s broken from her exertion. The poor thing’s down to a limping walk, but she still keeps on bravely carrying him. Unfair as it is, the dream has its own rules, and dismounting is not an available option for Sam. Her head is hung painfully low, and Sam’s heart breaks at the sight. He could swear that he can almost feel throbs of her pain washing over him in waves, each one in sync with a staggered step, and he wishes mournfully that he at least had water and cloth to dry the beast. A bushel of apples as well would be ideal.

The edge of the forest is a clean-cut line, forming one edge of a dirt road, and it comes upon them suddenly, the fast transition from darkness created by the thick treetops to the blazing sunlight startling both the steed and rider. The mare stops once all four feet hit the gravel, leaving Sam just awkwardly sitting there on her back, feeling like a tourist that booked his journey while drunk and now doesn’t exactly know what he’d paid for, but is trying to make the most of it anyway.

A building catches his eye on the far right, grey and industrial looking, seemingly merged with a sloping hill. By an entrance that looks like it leads underground, Sam’s gaze is met with the gleam of sunshine bouncing off the Impala’s freshly waxed hood.

_Thank fuck!_ Sam rejoices, because Dean is here, and that’s  _awesome_. Probably not apples, but his big brother will certainly have cloth and water for the horse.

And as it usually goes in the land of dreams - everything happening too abruptly and at the same time right on cue – it’s then that the mare collapses from under him, her body hitting the gravel with an unpleasant sound, but halfway through her fall Sam is no longer on her back to meet the ground with her.

For a second or so there is nothing but darkness, before warm, artificial light made by at least a dozen light bulbs starts shining through it, and it’s while he’s trying to blink away an onslaught of unnatural fog that Sam realizes he no longer has any control over his eyelids.

Or anything else, for that matter.

Vision clearing after too long to leave anyone feeling comfortable, Sam finds both the outdoors and the mare gone, replaced instead by a large, windowless library. The change  _is_  strange, but he’d once dreamed of flying on an airplane that turned into a banana mid-flight and just kept on gliding thirty-five thousand feet above the ocean like it wasn’t a big deal, so Sam finds this particular shift in scenery to be quite vanilla in comparison.

The place has a private look to it, Sam observes idly – mahogany flooring, not just tables for reading but plush couches as well, crystal chandeliers hanging from polished beams, and an impressive number of marble statues scattered strategically across the room to add to the overall feel of grandeur.

He does his best to go with the – admittedly weird – flow of the dream as he finds himself sitting at the one desk that’s cluttered with piles of ancient looking tomes and printed scans, with a half-drunk mug of coffee resting by a sleek-looking laptop placed in the centre of the mess. He begins to think that he must be looking at an imagined future, because the device looks like it came straight out of a sci-fi movie. And he’s just clicking away on it with no control over his own fingers whatsoever, with no other choice than to allow himself to absorb the information his eyes are refusing to unstick from.

Which doesn’t feel just strange but actually alarming.

Like, a red alert kind of deal.

He’s sort of starting to wish he could do something about it, but, apparently, he’s too busy with compiling some kind of a digital Bestiary, one that’s currently focusing on the creatures populating the British Isles. He catches a glimpse of a paragraph mentioning the Loch Ness monster, but then the body’s main inhabitant scrolls the page down before he can read it properly.

And Sam can’t figure out what’s weirder – the content of the page or what’s currently happening to him, and it’s that dilemma that forces him to become fully aware of himself, of the fact that all of this is a bit too detailed and real. The memory that he’s supposed to be asleep in a cabin in Colorado and not playing curator in a library in Kansas comes to him as subtly as a smack of a cast-iron pan over the head would.

And then what was supposedly a dream becomes a nightmare instead.

The abrupt shift from vague confusion into lucidity sends Sam panicking, and he’s suddenly aware of  _everything_ – of the feel of flannel against his back, the fact that he’s wearing slippers and not shoes, the potent aroma of old ink and parchment permeating the air, the feel of obviously expensive plastic of the keyboard he’s typing on – and his mind sends the input to the body to start heaving and stand up, but nothing happens.

The other Sam - the future or alternate reality or whatever the hell he is _-_  is in control, and the body just doesn’t care about what he’d told it to do.

Putting two and two together rewards Sam with the realization that he’s having the weirdest vision to date, one that’s a quicksand so claustrophobic that it’s almost making him wish he was seeing the usual dying people instead.

The click of a door opening breaks the silence, filling the surrounding space like the crack of a whip, but the man in control of the body doesn’t react to the sound even though his younger self is throwing an internal fit about having his back turned to a new arrival in unknown surroundings.

“Right where I left you,” Sam hears the rumble of his brother’s voice as he walks towards him – towards  _them –_ and it’s a deeper, throatier sound, one belonging to an older man than the one he’s familiar with, but Sam mentally sighs in relief nonetheless _._

Of course it’s just Dean, Sam snorts at himself; if this really is his future, who else would it be? God forbid that he’d moved on from being attached to his brother by the hip and got himself a girlfriend.

“I swear, one day you’re gonna lay literal roots in this place,” Dean’s chuckle ripples across the room, the heavy sound of footsteps gaining in volume before they abruptly stop as he comes to stand behind Sam’s back, and then –  _holy fucking shit_ – Sam feels himself turn his head up to meet Dean’s lips as they zero in on his own, the accompanying disbelief punching into Sam like a shot of too-strong liquor.

What exactly is going on here? His visions are usually a no-nonsense, straight to the point type of thing, but now he’s being showed domestic bliss? And is shit like this  _really_  going to be an actual thing one day? Because, sure, they’ve kissed each other plenty of times, but there always had to be an occasion, never as hello, and never on the  _mouth_.

Their lips stay locked together for a long, languid moment; Sam feels his eyes closing of their own accord, a flicker of Dean’s tongue meeting the tip of his own before the kiss breaks, making it anything but brotherly, and Sam wouldn’t be more confused or surprised if Alice’s white rabbit casually strolled through the place right now, waistcoat and all.

“Whatcha doin’?” Dean asks with a lazy smile, standing upright from where he was leaning over Sam and picking up the nearest stack of prints, flipping through them half-heartedly.  

“What I’m always doing. Cataloging,” the other Sam answers as he turns his head back to the computer screen, and it startles Sam to recognize his own voice coated with the extra layer of rasp on top.

And he’s outright shocked that there is no recognition of what just happened – of that lover’s kiss - like it was a normal, ordinary, everyday thing.

Is this actually the future? The question flies through Sam’s mind for the fourth time in the last minute.

This can’t actually be the future. The same reply echoes.

“No, I mean, what’s with the prints?” he more hears than sees Dean’s frown as his eyes are focusing on a typo in the section about Brollacan, which is apparently an extinct Gaelic creature of the night.

“The book I’m copying right now is too fragile for my constant flipping. And I’ve had enough of the air from the climate-control room for a lifetime,” the other Sam says with a sigh, left hand twirling a pen restlessly.

Now, his matured voice is not foreign enough to Sam’s ears for him not to recognize that something is off with the way the words came out. That the nonchalance of the answer is slightly feigned; his other self’s state is too anticipatory for just speaking about some old book.

It’s all a clear indication that the older man is aware of the fact that his younger counterpart is piggybacking him, and Sam never wanted to clock himself more than he does in this moment.

A whispered ‘calm down, it’s gonna be fine’ would serve as good enough comfort, but  _no._  Let’s be an ass about it and pretend we didn’t notice each other.

If Dean picks it up on the tension in the air, Sam can’t say, because he can’t turn his damned head to look at him, though he hears the ‘ _oooh_ ’ fall off Dean’s lips; a soft, almost startled sound, something in the content of the printouts he’s examining obviously clueing him in on the situation.

A single glance is exchanged between the two men before Sam’s eyes fall back on the screen, his heart sinking when he realizes that a silent understanding has been reached and that no verbal explanation will be added, in the usual Winchester fashion.

There’s a rustle of movement as Dean moves to sit on the table, propping his ass uncaringly on one of the stacks and dog-earing at least half of it.

The other Sam tries his best to frown at the action, but a fond chuckle still escapes him after a beat.

The new position allows Sam to finally get a proper look at his brother. The additional crinkles around Dean’s eyes definitely add strength to the argument that it’s the future he’s looking at. Dean’s older, though Sam couldn’t guess by how much. It could be seven or twelve years - not that it matters, though - because he’s in one piece, seemingly healthy, and Sam couldn’t ask for more.

But what’s  _also_ there on the still devilishly handsome face is the same anticipation he can feel seep off his older self, manifested as a slight pull in the corner of his mouth, and trademarked mischief hiding behind the green gleam of his eyes.

“Man, I still can’t believe this thing was real,” Dean breathes out in awe, making Sam want to die with the need to know what’s on the papers he’s holding.

Luckily for him, Dean drops the bundle on the table directly in front of him, and the other one - the older one in control - allows him ample time to gloss over them.

So, apparently, the Loch Ness monster was a real thing; who knew?

The Men of Letters, for one, whoever the hell they were.

Niseag, before he was renamed to Nessie, was a herbivore dinosaur relic kept alive by the magic of Scottish witches, before the coven’s last member died without leaving an heir. The creature died of natural causes a few months after her death, with the British branch of this secret society overseeing the disposal of the body. 

Sure, it’s fascinating stuff, but Sam recognizes this routine, knows it by heart; he can feel it in the marrow of this body he’s haunting, that this is not about the monster, and that the feigned nonchalance is just a show made entirely for his benefit.

They’re acting the same way Sam and Dean always do when there’s a third person in the room that needs to have wool pulled over their eyes.

And if this  _really_  is his future self, then he  _must_ know his past is here with them, watching. And Dean’s aware of it too, with the pictures of Nessie somehow being the revealing clue.

“What I can’t believe is that it was  _documented_. I mean, look at this shit,” his older self says, interest sounding genuine as he lifts up a separate stack of papers, one revealing much newer photographs than the drawings from the ancient tome, with one of them being particularly interesting, as the creature was craning its neck over the edge of a barge and being fed apples by a man in a suit whose cut belonged somewhere in the forties of the last century. 

It’s not the most extraordinary thing Sam has ever seen in his life (and ain’t that saying something about him?), but he’d still be pretty impressed if he didn’t have other things to worry about right now.

Like the implication of what Dean lazily rubbing his calf against Sam’s inner thigh means, considering that previous kiss.

“So how’s it going so far?” Dean asks, and the years haven’t changed his brother enough for Sam not to recognize from that tone that he doesn’t give a shit about the digitization of some old book on Scottish fairies and extinct creatures. 

“It’s taxing work,” the other Sam replies, focus not breaking away from the paragraph he’s editing.

“Don’t pretend you don’t get off on it,” Dean grins, a promise of mischief hiding in his voice, “and speaking of getting off,” he adds as he pulls a small bottle from his back pocket and twirls it in the air a few times.

Sam feels his hands drop away from the keyboard in a way that signals defeat before the fight even began, and that’s not a good sign.

“What now?” the other Sam asks hesitantly, the question echoing Sam’s exact thoughts.

“Believe it or not, it’s whiskey flavored _,_ ” Dean reveals with a bloom of a Cheshire-cat grin, eyes crinkling in delight as he watches Sam’s face crumble and fall at his words.

“Jesus, Dean,” the other Sam grinds out, and the younger one internally starts panicking about the fact that there’s only a limited amount of things that could be whiskey flavored and come in such small packaging.

That weird mouthwash, and vape juice, and -

“Dude, lube is the weirdest thing you could’ve started collecting,” the other Sam whines and fuck, fuck,  _fuck._

“Collectors don’t play with their shit, Sammy; they keep it in glass boxes. I’m a connoisseur.”

“You’re an  _idiot_ ,” the other Sam bites out, but there’s an undertone to it, one that’s dark,  _lustful_ , and Sam at that point has no other choice but to figure that somewhere down the line both of them probably hit their heads hard enough to leave permanent bruising on their brains, making that the only explanation for the fact that his cock is slowly starting to chub up in his pants at the sight of Dean scooting a bit closer to the edge of the table and allowing his legs to spread a bit wider.

“And  _you’re_ the one that’s gonna fuck me with whiskey flavored lube,” Dean breathes out as he leans over him again, placing both hands on the chair’s armrests, leaving his mouth invitingly open and looming mere inches above his own.

“I fucked you less than two hours ago. Your ass probably still smells like cherry,” the other Sam retorts, leaning in towards his brother by a fraction and no, just  _no._

They can’t be serious; this has to be just a new, edgier, more twisted form of their banter, it  _has_ to be. Or they’re doing it because they know he’s watching and are just fucking with him.

That does sound plausible.

_Please_ ,  _let that be it_ , Sam prays desperately to whatever deity that might be looking in on this fiasco.

“Probably tastes like it, too,” Dean wiggles a suggestive eyebrow, biting his lower lip slowly, which in turn makes Sam’s eyes fly to the tip of tongue peeking between pearly-white teeth like it’s a homing beacon.

His older self thankfully makes no effort to move yet, though Sam can feel from the heat gathering in his core that that’s not gonna last too long.

Dean lifts one hand to gently cradle the side of Sam’s neck with it, calloused thumb caressing the hollow dip under Sam’s ear, causing his breath to hitch almost imperceptibly. Sam decides that the loving touch feels kind of nice, until it switches to reverent and loaded with innuendo; then panic-mode kicks in.

The hand starts trailing a lower path down his body, fingers running through the valley of his pectorals and spreading once they reach his abdomen, before losing reach and the contact falling away.

It would turn Sam’s blood to ice if he had any say in it, but since he doesn’t, it instead makes his dick rise to full mast, precome already on its way to leaking through the fabric of his boxers despite the way his older self is acting like he has no interest in what Dean’s offering.

Sam’s giving his all to try and rationalize this debacle, but a lifetime of training as a hunter tells him that there’s not a spell or a curse or a manipulation of any kind strong enough to make them do  _this_ against their will. This is fundamental, untamperable; it falls under the same law that magic wouldn’t be able to have you shoot your mother in the head; you’d have just enough free will left to point the barrel of the gun at your own temple instead.

Feeling like he’s been dunked into an inescapable current but still keeping on thrashing against it fruitlessly, Sam realizes what the explanation for what he’s seeing is, naturally, the brilliant kid that he is, but it doesn’t come as comfort to know that they’re doing this of their own free wills.

It’s not one of those ‘anything could happen if you just get drunk enough’ situations.

It won’t just  _happen_ to them.

Sam seeing this now as the future will  _define_  it as the future; he’ll be changed by it no matter what his opinion on it is right now, and Dean by association when he tells him, and the Ouroboros will keep on devouring its own tail until the last drop of sand falls in the hourglass and the universe is no more.

“I’ll fuck you,” the other Sam breaks a silence that lasted way too long and made the air buzz with fucking  _carnality,_ and Sam wants to scream that that’s the wrong goddamn thing to say to your _brother._  

“But only if you leave that thing in here,” he feels himself nod in the direction of the bottle in Dean’s hand, voice clearly indicative that that’s the final offer.

And whiskey’s ruined for him for the rest of his life, whether they use the funky lube or not.

“Fine,” Dean relents with a disappointed sigh, setting the lube on the table obediently, “but I don’t know when you became such a prude.”

“Since your last experiment, when you almost chafed my dick off,” the older Sam retorts with an undignified snort.

How?

Just  _how_  does one almost get one’s dick chafed off? Sam wonders, and at that realizes he’s become thoroughly shell-shocked, if just going with it instead of trying to get his throat to produce an a-grade, horror-flick type of scream is any indication.

“I keep telling you; that must’ve been a bad batch,” Dean grins in response. “Besides, compared to honey, how bad could whiskey be?” he adds, and Sam regrets wishing that he knew, because honey’s now ruined for him, too.

But it’s seeing the genuine happiness on his brother’s face, not the sinful filth that’s the cause of it, that gives Sam the same feedback jamming a fork into a toaster would; that starts taking over his synapses and snaps his attention to.  

Go figure that it’s  _this_ kind of shit that would end up as the basis for the peace Dean’s always secretly craved for, and Sam almost feels stupid now he’s seeing it in action. Because Dean truly looks content with what’s happening. They always said there were no lengths to which they wouldn’t go to for each other, but it was hyperbolic to an extent, since nobody ever actually thought of putting incest on the table.

Sam knows that he hasn’t seen much so far, that this is only a snippet of what’s to come, but he can read this air easily and feel the heavy weight of it; can feel the implication of what must be done to ensure a future in which his lunatic of a brother is, for one, still  _alive_.

That he’ll be happy is a major bonus, even if the road leading to that destination holds a challenge of such a high caliber that Sam doesn’t really know how it will be overcome.

“I still haven’t forgiven you for that,” the other Sam gives a dry husk of a laugh.

“Bitch, I made it up to you tenfold,” Dean snorts back at him.                                       

“Oh, I’ll show you who the bitch in this house is,” the other Sam promises darkly, dick in his pants twitching in obvious agreement, and Sam wants to be gone, lost, because there’s no doubt about what’s going to happen next. 

“I bet you will, Sammy,” Dean agrees with a coy tilt of his head, much to Sam’s horror. “Gimme ten minutes, though. I need a quick shower first,” he adds with a smirk and stands up from the table – papers left thoroughly dog-eared in his wake, as expected - to walk out the room, leaving the older Sam with his transcripts and the younger one with his misery.

~*~*~*~*~

There’s gotta be a point to this.

He can’t be shown this shit just for the sake of getting scarred for life, Sam tries to convince himself as he watches his future self tinker with the buttons on the War table in the War room.

The fucking  _War_   _room_.

As if popping into the garage to fetch some random toolbox and finding out he’ll one day own a ‘57 Thunderbird wasn’t big enough of a shock.

The details of the vision admittedly look very cool in those fleeting moments when he’s able to forget about the elephant in the room, but the broader picture is horror of such quality even Hitchcock would be proud.

Ever the good boy scout, Sam gives it his best to observe his surroundings in order to at least get some useful info out of this disaster, but his walk from the large hall and through the maze of hallways reveals nothing of significance. He spots an armory at one point, but the older Sam just passes it by.

Sam startles a bit when one of the doors down the hallway suddenly opens, jasmine-scented steam whooshing out in swirls, and there’s Dean again, wearing nothing but a loosely tied bathrobe and a devilish smile.

They don’t acknowledge each other verbally; none of the colorful banter from before makes a reappearance, the air too thick with the built-up hunger to hold anything else, with both of them hyper-aware of what they were about to do.

They keep a distance of a few feet apart as they resume their walk down the hallway, Sam groaning inwardly in frustration from being unable to look away as his eyes work towards boring a hole through Dean’s ass from how intensely they’re following its sway.

Dean finally chooses a door after passing at least five more of them, and Sam’s allowed just enough time to take in the décor and decide that the bedroom they’ve entered definitely belongs to  _both_  of them.

Dominated by an upholstered California King covered in charcoal-grey bedding, with weapons ranging from handguns to knives lining one dark-brick wall and rows of bookshelves lining the other, with a reading nook in one corner and a monitor connected to three gaming consoles in the other, the place is a perfect blend of the two of them. There’s mess in some parts, order in others; a car magazine, an empty muffin box and a coffee mug sitting on one nightstand, a potted plant and a digital alarm clock on the other, leaving no doubt as to which side is whose.

And yeah, he does always take the right, Sam acknowledges miserably.

The moment the door closes behind him, Dean’s eyes are nothing less than fire as his gaze locks with Sam’s own. Shoes are discarded within a second, and it’s after his older self barely manages to snap open two buttons of his flannel that Sam is forced to learn how it feels to have his arms full with his brother’s lean body; what it’s like when Dean’s impatient fingers thread into hair that’s longer than he’s ever worn it and pull down on it to capture his mouth in a greedy kiss.

God help him, Sam fights with all he’s got to ignore the sensations, but this is a full body experience; he could ignore it in the same amount he could ignore having boiling water poured down his shirt.

What’s even worse is that, though he has no control over the body, the hormones churning through it have started reaching his consciousness like a poisonous vapor. He’s can’t help but start to be affected as his man-whore of a brother tongue-fucks his mouth in what ends up as the best and dirtiest kiss he’s experienced so far in his life.

The two men push and pull against each other ravenously, and Sam can feel every little bite, every press of fingers into flesh as they slowly make their way to the bed. He doesn’t know if the thrill he feels belongs to his older self or if it’s his own when Dean releases a tiny whimper as Sam’s hands travel down his spine to grab at the firm swell of his ass possessively. Sam feels his knees bend a bit in order to lift the smaller man in the air in a fluid motion and carry him the rest of the way as his brother’s legs wrap securely around his waist.

Sam can feel the hard line of Dean’s dick digging into his abdomen like it’s made out of searing heat and nothing else, and it’s a small mercy that his college experience had been adventurous enough that he’d been with that one guy for a couple of weeks before hooking up with Jess, otherwise he would’ve had a whole ‘nother thing to panic about in combination with the fact that he’ll one day knowingly be committing incest.

Springs squeak mildly in protest as the two of them drop onto the covers in a tangle of limbs, Sam settling between Dean’s open legs, their lips finding each other again as soon as they do, locking together in another sloppy, hurried kiss.

The older Sam’s fingers work at the sash at Dean’s belly, pulling it from the robe with enough force to send it flying across the room as the man busies himself with adding fresh marks on the stretched line of Dean’s throat and making him whimper. But when the bathrobe falls open and exposes his brother’s naked chest, he leans away to enjoy the view. His gaze roams the spread of Dean’s legs, the outstretched arms and marbled nipples, but Sam finds himself finally able to detach from the sensations for a bit, as the shocking details of his brother’s skin give the final answer to the question as to why Sam’s being forced to watch all of this. And it’s bad enough to make Sam regret thinking that dicking his brother was the worst thing he could’ve been shown.

Though Sam has to admit that Dean makes a mouthwatering sight like this, with his skin is bathed in the orangey light of the night lamp and the few stray beads of water still clinging to it shining prettily like tiny diamonds, but the scars marring it are fucking  _horrifying_  - not so much the aesthetic of them as the fact that they look like it’s a miracle Dean survived receiving them.

Fuck.

Fuck, fuck,  _fuck._

Though his eyes are focusing on just about any part of Dean’s body but the scars, Sam tries the analyze what he’s seing as best as he can; he finds that the pink and shiny scar-tissue tells the story of something with a bear-sized jaw digging its teeth into Dean’s right shoulder deep enough to almost rip the flesh off. Then, from the top of Dean’s left pectoral and all the way past his bellybutton stretch four parallel lines, obviously claw marks, and he concludes that Dean’s organs must have avoided being shredded by a picometer.

Sam’s seen wounds like this, unhealed, without even having the chance to do so – on a corpse at the morgue in the town below their mountain, and in the photographs related to their current hunt.

He’s stunned by the sight. He doesn’t know how to process it. It’s a good thing, really, that he’s not the captain of this ship, because the crescendo of his heartbeat, had he the conn, would be abrupt enough to make his heart burst.

Dean’s one of the best – if not  _the_ best – hunters out there. There’s no creature walking the earth that’d be able to outsmart or ambush him; he’d only get himself mauled like this if –

If…

If Sam fucks up bad enough to need Dean turning himself into a human shield. Because it’s only Sam that he’d throw away his life for in this manner.

So what the hell is the point here, then?

To let Sam know that – as much as Dean would like to convince him it’s a vacation – the hunt they’re currently on is going to go really bad, but Dean will somehow live through being shredded into confetti by the hybrid werewolf? But that can’t be the whole point, not without additional detail. Sure, if told, the knowledge about it becomes a free ticket for Dean to throw himself into danger with an assurance that he’ll live through it no matter how bad their situation gets. But what it also shows are the conditions necessary to get to this future, where they’re still alive and thriving ten years into it, the analytical part of Sam’s mind chimes. 

The conditions necessary for the ancient snake to keep on devouring itself.

Sam finds himself absolutely overwhelmed by the conclusion he’d just reached, feels a phantom of breathlessness and expects the vision to cut off at this point, stupidly deciding that there’s not anything left for him to see. But that plan flies out the window when Dean’s eager hand slips past the elastic of his sweats.

The gasp his older self releases feels much like it was his own, and he’d be lying to say that his brother’s  _attention_  doesn’t feel nice - it feels like fucking bliss, actually; it’s sex after all, but as his mind reroutes itself from panicking about the mechanics of causality and goes back to trying to keep up with the mantra of  _wrongfuckno,_ it all quickly starts to crumble when Dean’s skilled fingers start rubbing at the wet spot at the front of his boxers.

“My big boy,” Dean praises, focus shifting on releasing Sam’s cock from the confinement of his clothes, and Sam cringes inwardly, because those words sounded so, so wrong to him – a throwback to the time when a growth spurt finally made him shoot past Dean and his brother was trying his best to be proud instead of being a butthurt ass about it. His older self obviously doesn’t agree with him as he grabs a handful of Dean’s hair, yanking it hard enough to make Dean gasp and expose the milky-white flesh of his neck, mouth latching onto the sweet spot where his brother’s heartbeat can be felt the strongest, sucking hard enough to leave a new bruise while Dean keeps on working on him with his hand.

And -  _fuck_  - Dean knows just how he likes it, has learned it from probably  _years_  of practice, and when the boxers finally come off – and if he had any control over himself whatsoever - he knows that at this point he’d be doing exactly as his older self just did; fucking raggedly into the sweet heat as his big brother twists and turns his fingers around him just right, the pumping eased by globs of precome that have already escaped the reddened crown.

After barely a minute of that Sam can feel the beginning of his orgasm starting to build, his balls drawing up as Dean wickedly picks up the rhythm, and the other Sam pulls Dean’s hand away from his dick to prevent the show from ending before it even properly started, the resulting high-pitched whine of displeasure Dean releases making Sam feel like he’d burst a blood-vessel if he could – and again the unconvincing mantra starts: it’s wrong, wrong,  _wrong._

The older Sam abandons Dean’s neck in favor of leaving a trail of shiny kisses all over Dean’s collarbones and torso, circling with his tongue and biting at both nipples, a nip at the bellybutton rewarding him with a hiss from his brother, a bite on the cut of his hip earning him an actual yelp.

Who knew his brother was so responsive?

Sam wishes  _he_ didn’t.

When he gets low enough to nuzzle at Dean’s naked crotch he inhales deeply at the musky aroma found there, eyes fluttering shut for a moment – and Jesus, he was never the sniffing type, but there he fucking goes, like it’s the best fetish he’s ever discovered.

Rustling can be heard by the bed’s headboard as Dean fumbles with one of the pillows, retrieving a bottle of lube he found under it and pushing it into Sam’s hand - neutral flavored, as his older counterpart double checks.

Taking a kneeling position between legs Dean’s readily spread for him, Sam watches his fingers get coated with the cold liquid as Dean tilts his hips to present his pink pucker obscenely and –  _fucking hell –_ his older self just  _had to_ , the sonofabitch just couldn’t resist leaning down and plunging his tongue straight  _into_ it, causing Dean to keen depravedly like a bitch in heat before Sam’s dick even came near his tight hole.

Tight, but not as tight as it should be –  _fucked_   _open_ , Sam realizes, and some deep, dark and twisted part of him decides that he likes the sound of that, making the rest of him want to scream.    

The sharp taste of come meets Sam’s tongue at the readily yielding entrance, some cherry mixed into it - as Dean promised - and never would he have guessed that he’d one day develop a kink for lapping his own release out of his big brother.

In fact, even  _he_ , the gentlest of the Winchesters, would have probably clocked someone for the mere suggestion.

“Wanna taste how sweet this ass of yours is?” the other Sam rasps out, chuckling at Dean’s breathy _fuck, yeah_ , then allowing his head to be pulled down by his hair again so that he could share the bittersweet mix of flavors. Dean all but devours his tongue in an effort to savour the taste, loving what he finds, if one judges by the shudder he releases, and they keep on kissing sloppily until Sam’s lube-coated fingers warm back up to body temperature; until they’re ready to start opening Dean up. 

“Spread your legs wider for me, baby,” the older Sam urges, and  _fuuuck_ , Dean – his big brother, Dean _,_ who won’t admit a puppy is cute so as not to put his manhood at risk – is spreading his legs on command,  _presenting_ his taint on command, and melting into a fucking puddle when he gets called ‘baby’.

Never, not once in his life - not even when he was fifteen and Dean was a nineteen-year-old embodiment of beastly wantonness personally tailored by the devil himself - had Sam looked at Dean as a sexual object; but this is Dean  _wanting_  him to want him, and  _goddammit_ , after watching this show, Sam now can’t help but do exactly that _._

How long has this whole thing been going on so far? Twenty minutes? Maybe half an hour?

That’s too short of a time for one to have their whole world turned upside down; way too short of a period to have one’s prime fucking directive rewritten from ‘love and live for your brother’ to ‘ _love-_ love and live for your brother’.

Dean’s hole feels like velvety perfection when Sam’s fingers breach the furled muscle, tight but not virgin-tight, too open from their previous session for that; two fingers pushing in at once and all the way to the last knuckle, immediately starting to fuck into his brother’s heat with a steady pace, third added in not four thrusts after, making Dean throw his head back and chant  _Sammy_ ,  _Sammy_  almost deliriously once his prostate is found.

Sam’s fingers get coated in a white mess that can only be the previous load his older self’s given his brother and – no, no,  _don’t! –_ he pulls them out of Dean to bring them to his mouth to _lick. One. Clean._

Jesus fucking Christ, Sam would gladly faint if he could.

It’s more of the same taste from before, but before Sam gets a chance to throw a fit about how utterly depraved all of this is, Dean lifts himself up on his elbows, cheeks flushed and glassy eyes barely kept half-open, looking more fucked-out than anyone in human history that ever came before him. Something inside of Sam that he thought would’ve had the strength of reinforced concrete creaks, jolts, then turns into consistency of hot pudding.

“Please,” Dean begs softly, the sound of it almost shocking Sam by how uncharacteristic it is to his usually gruff nature. “ _Please_ ,” he repeats more eagerly, before the older Sam finally takes pity on him, pushing the other two come-coated fingers into the heat of his mouth, letting his brother’s head fall back and beautiful green eyes close as he sucks on them happily.

“Look at you. So  _needy_. Like a bitch in heat,” he hears himself growl as the come on his fingers gets replaced by slick spit, then reclaiming them from the cage of Dean’s teeth and plunging them back into Dean’s ass almost harshly, voice reaching a whole new depth Sam didn’t even know existed. “ _My_ bitch,” he reinforces the claim as Dean cants his hips to make the fingers push even deeper inside of him.

“Yours,” Dean murmurs huskily in agreement, a dirty smile blooming on sinfully parted lips. “’S enough. Fuck me,” he almost mewls as Sam’s fingers piston at his sweet spot, sweat gathering at his temples, and Sam watches himself take his brother’s plea as a command as he lines up his leaking cock with Dean’s puffy entrance and does just that.

And it’s too much.

Way too fucking much for a healthy man of Sam’s age to watch and handle without something in his psyche going wonky as a result.

He’s reached that point where his own eyes would be glassed over in pretty much the same way Dean’s currently are if he was wearing his own body; he’s been broken, broken on the inside, stuck between wanting to be in control of the older body so that he could either run out of this place to find a friendly bridge to jump off of, or to start unrestrainedly plowing through the sweet, sweet, vice-like grip of Dean’s ass.

He’s not sure which of the two he’d pick if he actually had to, and that’s an answer in itself.

It takes the older Sam only one solid slide of his hips to sheathe his dick completely inside of Dean, stilling for a bit once his hips are snug against the perfect curve of Dean’s ass to let the other man adjust, though it doesn’t seem necessary from the way his brother immediately starts wiggling his own hips in protest of the pause. Taking the hint, the other Sam leans down to capture his brother’s lips one more time before setting up a steady rhythm that sets Dean panting, throat barely restraining half-swallowed moans.

“God, fuck,  _Sammy,_ ” Dean groans into the pillow by his head as Sam’s thrusts bring them chest to chest, friction causing his nipples to harden, the sensation setting off fireworks behind his eyes. “Deeper, get it deeper in me,” he begs, the other Sam complying immediately, going balls-deep on every thrust and setting a mercilessly hard tempo, pounding into his brother until the sound of flesh smacking against flesh fills the room and the sensory overload sends Dean’s back arching off the mattress.

It lasts, Sam’s surprised for how long, but when they both get close, so fucking close that Sam’s seeing stars already, Dean’s body jerks underneath him suddenly in a way that has nothing to do with pleasure, and the movement of Sam’s hips grinds to a dissatisfactory halt. Dean’s eyes fly open wide in panic, the startled gasp falling off kiss-swollen lips wrapping the whole scene up as the perfect trainwreck.

“What?” the other Sam asks in a rush, clearly afraid that he’d hurt Dean somehow and starts pushing off, just about to pull out when Dean’s ankles cross behind his back to secure him in place.

“Not like this,” Dean pants out, the frown on the older Sam’s forehead this time feeling to Sam like it’s genuinely his own, as neither of them understood what the hell Dean meant by that.

“I gotta ride you,” Dean gasps brokenly as a slight shift of Sam’s hips causes the dick inside him to pull on his rim in a way that makes pain ride the edge of pleasure.

There’s a brief pause where they’re both just panting and staring at each other, and if the older Sam understands why it’s ‘gotta’ be that way, he doesn’t acknowledge verbally, but Sam’s wonderment is quickly forgotten when arms that are stronger than they ever were before move to scoop Dean up from the mattress and flip them both until he has his brother sitting in his lap and whining above him, dick slipping out in the process with a wet sound.

Dean rushes to reach behind himself to grip Sam’s slippery cock and steady it as he lines it back up with his abused hole, lowering –  _impaling_  - himself balls-deep on it and not giving himself even a moment to catch his breath before resuming the steady grind from before.

Sam really didn’t think fucking his brother could get any better than it was before the switch, but apparently this whole experience is set on seeing just how many times he could end up being wrong in a specific period of time.

“Just use it. Use my cock,” the older Sam instructs in a rasping tone, lying back on the mattress to give Dean a full range of motion, and Dean starts a vigorous grind, angling himself in a way that milks his prostate with every downward thrust.

“You gotta fill me up again, Sammy,” he practically whines, so fucked-out that control over his voice is down to a bare minimum, “you know you gotta. No pulling out to put it in my mouth, ya hear me?” he insists, head falling back in ecstasy when the other Sam’s response comes in the form of grabbing him at the hips and starting to fuck up into his ass with renewed vigor. 

Sam’s just about done with pretending all of this doesn’t feel like heaven; there’s no point to it now that it’s gone this far out of hand, because  _holy hell,_ having Dean finish him off by sucking the come out of his dick suddenly sounds like the best goddamned idea anyone’s ever had.

“Don’t worry; you’ll have both my loads leaking down your thighs. That what you want, baby?” the other Sam taunts breathily with a devilish grin.                                      

“I wanna keep it in me,” Dean meets him filth for filth, eyes sparkling, “I wanna be so full with you,” he keeps on mewling, and goddammit, marking his brother up that way suddenly sounds even better to Sam than having him swallow for him.  

There’s no real cohesion to the older Sam’s movements anymore as he grabs Dean’s hips in an even tighter grip, fingers digging deep enough into the flesh to bruise, but it’s still more than good enough to make Dean go ragdoll-limp above him, eyes no longer focused, his keening mouth hanging open in a pretty pout, happy and content to be used.

Three more harsh thrusts are all it takes for the older Sam to lose it, moaning his brother’s name as hot spurts of come start pumping up deep into Dean’s slick hole, one right after the other, filling him up to the brim, and from the way Dean clenches his abused muscles and throws his head back his own orgasm is just about to follow, when –

The scene just suddenly … breaks.

Sam can barely believe it when he realizes that it was his own will that made his eyes fly open and take a lungful of crisp mountain air – and fuck, sitting up was a bad idea, because there’s already cooling come dribbling down his chest and getting all over the sheets - but he’s even more shocked to meet a  _clearly_ younger Dean’s gaze holding frantic scrutiny, with no trace of the pleasure from moments ago shining in the forest-green of his eyes.

“What the actual  _fuck_ , Sammy?” Dean demands, shock at seeing Sam in this state sending his voice all the way into Dad-mode territory, all while trying to figure out how and why is it that his brother is so frightened and so fucked-out at the same time, making that question the one that starts one of the most awkward and uncomfortable mornings they’ve had in a long, long time.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for reading! I hope you’ve liked this chapter, I was very nervous about posting it. We’re back in the cabin with the next chapter and we’re staying there, because this POV was the most difficult thing I’ve ever had to tackle. I’m still not sure how good of a job I’ve done with it. If you have a moment, please let me know what you think - even if you didn’t like something, so I’ll know if things need fixing. It would mean the world to me! Now might also be a good time for me to let you know that English is not my first language and that the story doesn’t have a beta. If the idioms or some grammar feel off (or are simply wrong), that’s why. =)


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I’d like to thank [Voodoogypsyeyes](https://archiveofourown.org/users/voodoogypsyeyes/) whose guidance, advice and continuous support have helped me with writing this chapter in more ways than I can say. =)
> 
> Also, from now on my ao3 profile will be updated every two weeks (on the 1st and 14th of the month) where I'll let you know of my progress with writing the future chapters, which I hope I'll be able to keep under 10k so that it never takes this long for me to update again.

 

 

“We’re telling Bobby,” is Dean’s toneless statement that breaks Sam out completely from the land of dreams and forces his sleep-heavy lids to open and meet the harsh light of a new day breaking.

Black spots immediately crowd his vision, but he’s still got just enough of it left to register that Dean’s side of the bed is empty. Though it takes some blinking and squinting, Sam’s hazel-colored gaze eventually finds his big brother’s silhouette standing in a halo of pollen-infused sunrays just outside the French door leading to the balcony of their bedroom. Dean’s got a mug of fresh-brewed coffee resting in one hand, a cigarette that’s already been thoroughly sucked on in the other.

Sam’s woken up frowning over the mess he’d made of himself in his sleep,  _again_ , but the crease between his eyebrows deepens even further at the sight of Dean doing a pretty good imitation of a chimney. His big brother can call himself a chipper all he wants, but he’s riding a tar-coated downward spiral right there, and it won’t be pretty if he doesn’t start breaking soon.

In the end, going to bed last night not too long after sundown - after spending the entire day bickering over appropriate spirit-blocking charms and sigils - turned out to be a brilliant decision, because Sam was predictably right about the visions not being a one-time event.

He’s visited the Bunker in his sleep for the second night in a row, just like he’d suspected he would.

He spent his night observing himself scribble notes into fancier programs than his current world’s got, watered plants that only grow in their underground surroundings due to the help of some pretty heavy-duty lamps, then finished the tour by laying his brother out on the kitchen island as a heavenly-smelling dinner was bubbling away on the stove and creamed him again where he’s pinkest and sweetest, all while sucking onto Dean’s plump bottom lip like it’s the only damned thing it was made for.

And as a result, here’s yet another dawn breaking with Sam having his own spooge pooling in his bellybutton, the pearly liquid these days constantly on the runny side, threatening to spill over and ruin the freshly laid set of crisp white sheets.

After giving his stubble a good scratch, Sam grabs the fluffy towel he spots waiting for him on the nightstand. He’s thankful out of practical reasons (and embarrassed out of all the rest of them) that Dean’s probably woken up at the very start of Sam’s thrashing and fetched it for him as soon as the involuntary sex-noises started.

Wrapping the baby-blue cotton around his middle to let the material soak up most of his mess, he turns his gaze towards his brother’s flannel-clad back once more. He’s content to just stare at the sight for a while, because there’s absolutely no response he has for his brother that will have even its pinky toe in the domain of comfortable.

Letting Bobby know –  _really?_

There’s probably no yōkai in existence the man wouldn’t know how to exterminate, but dreams and visions and high-magic is something Bobby usually gives a polite sniff when offered, but most of the time ends up declining and throwing onto the back of the next available hunter. And Dean’s well aware of the fact, which makes it a clear sign he’s  starting to panic. It’s a straw, and he’s grasping at it. Not that the cigarettes weren’t a clue as to what his brother’s mental state is like, Sam thinks with a soulful sigh. 

A residential squirrel is sitting unnoticed by either of the brothers on a lower branch of the pine tree nearest to the balcony, the critter starting to get slightly alarmed as more and more whiffs of smoke start coming her way. Dean is the first smoker to occupy the cabin in the whole two years of its existence, and the little furball soon decides that it’s best for her to scurry away from the nasty stuff, hopping some five or six trees away and thinking no more of it once a berry bush gets discovered.

A Bullsnake is passing by in the tall grass of the slope below the balcony, only a foot from where some of Dean’s cigarette ash has fallen, but not caring much about the humans either as it slithers away in search of bird nests to ransack.

Much like yesterday, the skies over the surrounding mountains are clear, the wrens and thrushes and seemingly all the rest of Colorado’s bird population chirping out a cacophony, and yet another morning’s at risk of being ruined by Sam and Dean’s old-married-couple-style bickering.

Once satisfied that he’s dried his belly as best as he could - though his happy trail still unhappily looks like someone’s tried to style it with an excessive amount of hair product - Sam pulls his underwear back in place and walks over to where Dean’s standing, tossing the scrunched up towel through the bathroom’s open door on the way.

“Are we? Really?” Sam asks groggily, raising an eyebrow. The skepticism thickens his voice even further than sleep did.

“Yes,  _really_ , Sam,” Dean huffs. The older man’s shoulders square slightly; he’s obviously bracing for a fight. Or a spat at the very least.

“We need Bobby’s help, whether we like it or not. I’d rather endure the embarrassment than leave you exposed to God knows what like this,” Dean insists, Dad’s good ol’ don’t-fuck-with-me-boy voice making a reappearance in the process.

“I’m just saying,” Sam lifts both palms up as a gesture of peace even though Dean’s back is still stubbornly turned to him, “because you bristled like a hedgehog at the idea yesterday.”

When no snarky response comes from Dean, Sam sighs some more and moves the rest of the way to stand by his brother’s side, bare feet meeting the cool, slightly dewy tiles of the balcony.

Since Dean’s silence is allowing it, Sam lets himself stare at the sternly fixed lines of his brother’s profile, eyes practically devouring every stunning feature like it’s the first time he’s seeing him.

And hell, maybe that’s not too far from the actual truth; it’s certainly a new light that the dreams have shined on the older man.

Sam’s surprised to find that even a pissy, on-the-edge Dean is as beautiful a Dean as the one that drops to his knees delicately and serves his man with the devotion of a particularly twisted altar-boy. And  _shit,_ what an observation to make. If their father is looking down on them, Sam hopes he’s turned his head away in shame long before Sam’s reached this particular point.

The thing is, Sam had never actually looked before _,_ not for real anyway, but now that his eyes have been opened to the eyelashes, the Cupid’s bow that has no place being anywhere other than on the highest-paid Playboy bunny, the goddamn freckles he now knows can be found fucking  _everywhere_ on his brother… Well, let’s just say that he’s sure he’d give a limb, an eye and about five good years of his life to have the epiphany taken away.

Because fucking sick is what  _this_ is.

Over the course of only two nights he’s managed to become the exact type of man he’s hated since Dean grew into a face that became a homing beacon for the sexually repressed – the type that stares blatantly at Dean’s eyes and lips when his brother walks into a bar or a gas station or a diner or just about anywhere and  _wants._

But not to hold Dean’s hand.

Oh, no.

More like to tie Dean’s hands behind his back or to a sturdy bedframe and to use him in the ways Dean looks like he was made to be used.

And Sam wants to grab the .45 hidden under his pillow and shoot his filthy brains out just for having that thought.

He tries to run a hand through his own shaggy hair but ends up failing when two out of five fingers snag on tangles that will need some patient brushing out later. God, he really feels like he’s a kid all over again; bite-your-lip-off kind of jittery, with his overlong bangs falling into his eyes and smelling of dried up boy-juice.

He watches Dean inhale one last drag from his cigarette and stub the thing out, his brother jamming so much passive aggression into the motions that it should be considered a skill. Sam takes the hint that it’s time to take his eyes away from the tiny imperfection on the otherwise straight line of Dean’s nose before a fit gets thrown, so he focuses on the overwhelming amounts of nature’s blues, yellows and greens he’s got in front of himself instead.

The other bedroom is bigger and swankier, but theirs is the one with the view, what with the balcony overlooking the rolling slope on which the cabin is perched. Most of the coolest focal points this part of the mountain has to offer are on display for them in this spot. It’s beautiful, and also calming, which is coming quite in handy right now.

Sam shuffles his feet, lazily trying to get rid of a fallen leaf sticking to his foot that’s really starting to tickle. Dean’s still keeping himself busy with pointedly ignoring him, the frowning man’s thoughts drifting off to God knows where.

Sam thinks on his brother’s words for a bit and tries to predict Bobby’s reaction and suggestions once he gets the news. Calling them idiots for certain; that’s a mandatory ritual by now, whatever it is they have done. Telling them to ward the cabin and see how the night goes. And once he finds out that they already tried it - and that it had failed _-_ the only next step Bobby will be able to come up with will be to instruct Dean to drag Sam’s ass all the way back to South Dakota (rolled up in a carpet if need be) so that they can lock him up in the panic room and see how things go from there.

And  _fuck that;_  that’s just about the last thing Sam wants to happen. It won’t do any good - he can feel that in his bones - and besides, this place has actually grown on him now, the creature prowling the seemingly tame forest be damned.

But.                                                               

He also knows that Dean is right to ask for their adoptive father’s help, no matter how it might complicate things (or how red in the face it’ll make all three of them).

Someone  _should_ know. Eventually. That is an undisputed fact. So Sam’s willing to compromise.

“Fine,” he accepts grouchily, hopping on one leg to finally get the damned leaf off his foot, “but at least leave it until he calls us back on the Fuath,” he adds, hoping against hope that the whole mess will blow over before then.

The proposition makes Dean click his tongue irritably. Sam watches the moss-green of Dean’s eyes turn a shade darker, even with the sun blaring at him hard enough to give his pretty face another set of freckles. Though it could mean a delay of well over a week, it doesn’t take long for Sam to get a curt nod in response from his brother anyway.

One corner of Sam’s mouth tugs itself into a relieved smile. He turns away from the sun then, exposing a broad bare back to its warmth and leans back on his elbows against the railing, hair falling away from his face with the tilt of his head. Silence follows, one that’s actually comfortable for a while.

Sam allows himself to bask in the breeze. To enjoy birdsong and all the smells of the forest, to be content and feel safe in this remote place as he’s standing by his brother’s side. He pensively thinks on whether he could badger Dean into making them crepes for breakfast. He also allows himself to ignore the black cloud Dean’s trying to pull over both their heads. It’s funny how the tables have turned; only yesterday Sam was the one being accused of trying to ruin their vacation, and now Dean’s picking up the work.

When he finally opens his eyes, though, the first thought that comes to mind is that, _Jesus fuck,_ Dean wouldn’t know what ‘subtle’ meant if it hit him in the face with a pan while screaming.

Sam knows Dean is worried a lot more than he’s letting on, but Sam still watches with limited patience as gold-speckled green eyes stick to the dried stain on Sam’s abdomen so fixedly that one would think there’s a computerized mechanism hiding behind them currently analyzing the molecular structure of Sam’s jizz.

If he wants to be consistent with the panic-mode Sam’s dreams are pushing him towards, Dean should be uncomfortable by the sight, Sam thinks; he should’ve looked away and left the attention at a glance, but he’s still just staring.

Sam knows that boundaries are only a vague concept in Dean’s mind, chucked in the same disregarded bin as privacy and the frightful thought of allowing Sam to live a life without him. While growing up, Sam was the only one out of the three Winchesters with the instincts to know that, when both brothers hit puberty, they  _shouldn’t_ have been sharing beds tiny enough for them to always end up in a lover’s tangle of limbs during the darkest hours of the night. That they shouldn’t have been showering together more often than not because Dad wanted them to be quicker. That Dean shouldn’t have been made to practically single-handedly raise his younger brother.

Even with the monsters and the hunting, ‘normal’ should have existed at least  _somewhere_  in their world.

‘Awkward’ as well, but it was never so.

So now, when Dean indulges his impulse and reaches to touch Sam’s flaking belly, gently swiping weapon-calloused fingers across the taut patches covering Sam’s skin - the edges of the stain predictably start to peel, and Sam doesn’t even flinch at the action. And when Dean lovingly, protectively as if there’s a baby laying in there, spreads his palm across Sam’s abdomen, molding fingers into ridges made out of firm muscle, Sam closes his eyes. Resignedly, with a shake of the head that sends his shaggy bangs swaying, he thinks that twenty-six is far too late in the life of a man for his brother to be able to learn of propriety.

“Give that back,” Sam grumbles once he’s had his fill of Dean’s staring and petting, and reaches again for the coffee his brother is holding like the divine dark roast belonged to him in the first place.

The cabin’s kitchen appliances downstairs are big and shiny, have foreign sounding brand names and look like they’re worth more than everything Sam and Dean own put together.

On their second day of vacationing the boys ventured out into the picturesque town under their mountain and found a shop specializing in imported tea and coffee, buying the highest quality coffee beans they could get their hands on. The shop assistant - a matronly-looking twentysomething - joyfully decided to add herself to the list of people who outright refuse to believe that the boys are brothers and complimented them on what a refreshingly cute couple they make; the toffees are on the house, my dears; wink-wink.

Dean wanted to strangle the woman despite her innocent beaming right then and there, having heard enough of that crap by now in the two-plus years of being mistaken for Sammy’s bitch wherever they go. Sam had to smile back at the girl through gritted teeth and hastily march his brother out of the divine-smelling store before something spewed out of his mouth that would give them a much worse rep than just being together-together.

As unpleasant it is to have everyone assume that they’re dicking each other, for the town to think that they’re a couple is still a much better reputation than the one where they’re short-tempered assholes -  _that’s_ the one that would make people grab their pitchforks in today’s world.

With cheeks still delicately pinked even after the longish car ride, Dean ground up and brewed the first properly made coffee he and Sam had ever drank, and after a week of living like kings (according to Winchester standards, at least) both of them are now having unspoken concerns about how in the world they were going to go back to the usual caffeinated gas station and diner sludge once the ‘vacation’ was over. 

Dean surrenders the ‘Home is Colorado’-with-a-fat-elk-drawing mug to Sam without complaint. He opens his pack of Marlboro Reds, counts how many he’s got left – six, seven, eight - then lifts up a new cigarette to light it with a silver Zippo he’d pocketed from a douchebag that’d started a bar brawl over a skanky blonde picking Dean over him back in Arizona in ‘99.

Once lit, the cig tastes disgusting, and each drag makes him want to spit everything he’s taken in  _out_ , but it’s going through the motions that’s easing his nerves, not the nicotine itself, so he stubbornly keeps at it while his baby brother glowers next to him. 

Sam turns again to mirror Dean’s position, hazel eyes meeting hazy sunrays through centipede rows of curly lashes. That way both of them are now leaning forward on their elbows against the railing, just like they did yesterday. Another silence settles over them as they watch the sun’s disk finish rising above the mountain tops in the distance through squinty eyes, sharing the cooling coffee back and forth between them. Sam even takes a drag from the cigarette, his inability to resist the temptation making Dean’s eyes crinkle a bit. Not that he wants Sammy addicted, he just likes that wherever he leads, Sammy eventually follows, whether the kid likes it or not.

 _This one’s the last, for a couple of days at least_ , Dean promises himself as he watches the ember at the tip eat away the rest of the paper and tobacco.

“So,” Dean breaks the quiet.

“So.” Sam echoes back.

“Anything actually useful this time?” Dean reluctantly pokes the bear. He knows that he’s gotta indulge Sammy at least a bit if he wants to begin the conversation on how to make this shit end, even though the last thing he wants is to listen to more of that Bunker crap.

There are still a few sips of lukewarm coffee left in their shared mug, so when Sam hands it to him and Dean takes a sip, he doesn’t realize that his shithead of a kid brother timed it perfectly until it’s already too late.

“If you consider me finding out that you don’t possess a gag reflex useful, then sure,” Sam mockingly chirps, and coffee’s suddenly  _raining_  over the balcony’s edge as Dean spits it out in surprise. He almost chokes himself to death in the process, finishing it all off spectacularly with a violent coughing fit.

“ _Motherfu-”_ Dean yells as soon as his vocal cords get back online, leaning forward to stop the remaining liquid dribbling down his chin from ruining his shirt, and Sam’s doubling over with laughter by then.

With fingers that are no longer twitching for another cigarette but for the cold weight of an actual gun, Dean flicks his brother on the forehead. It doesn’t end up feeling all too rewarding, since all it does is make the brat’s cheeks grow even more dimpled with laughter. 

While Sam’s still clutching his flaky stomach and fighting to regain his breath from his crone-like cackles and giggles, Dean, visibly shaken from his brother’s statement, walks over to the other side of the balcony and settles there to stare at the beaver pond in the distance.

Dean was surprised to find one at the cabin’s relatively high altitude, but there it is, its ripples glistening like rows of diamonds as the early rays hit the water’s surface from the low angle, its wet-furred residents completely unaware of the two humans that recently became their next door neighbors as they splash around and play in the water.

The two of them probably would’ve gone down there today if not for the dream shit happening again, Dean thinks wistfully while his mind is calling all hands on deck to try and shake off what feels like the beginning of a panic attack.

The scene plays out in his mind: they would’ve been resting for a bit on the gray, sun-warmed stone bench placed at a polite distance from the pond’s edge, sweaty and content after yet another hike Sam would’ve dragged them on. They would’ve been splashing the last of the water from their bottles over their sun-heated heads as their cabin loomed up the hill invitingly, snickering at each other’s lame jokes. It would’ve been fun and good.

 _Relaxing,_ which is the whole point of them even being here, but it seems that their break is officially over (short as it has been) now that the visions have formed a pattern, and they’re back to the regularly scheduled program of their fucked up lives.

Shit, even the Scooby Gang doesn’t manage to randomly stumble on this much fuckery.

If Dean is asked, they’ve come to Colorado for a change of pace and scenery, no matter how aggressively Sam bitches about it only being half of the truth. The hunt for the hybrid just sweetened the pot, and that’s Dean’s final word on it. So Sam reading away on his laptop like he did for the whole day yesterday and Dean staring blankly at cooking shows without Sam to provide the necessary company for anything remotely fun up here sucks ass. It’s a painful one-eighty; it’s those same motel room habits they’re trying to run from in the first place.

Dean might have grumbled about not wanting to go kayaking before, but right about now he’d give anything to be getting splashed like a wet t-shirt contestant and fighting stubborn currents as he bobs up and down over rocks and tiny waterfalls in those ridiculous looking life-jackets instead of dealing with this shit _._

Secret societies, bunkers and creampies – sounds like the title of a cheap porno, for fuck's sake.

It could still all be a coincidence - Dean fills that cup for himself and bravely tries to swallow its contents down - but the first crack in the veneer of his belief is finally starting to form. Because as small of a detail as it is, as random as it should feel, Dean still finds it way too specific for his liking.

‘Cause Sam’s right; Dean  _doesn’t_ have a fucking gag reflex.

So  _holy_  fucking  _shit_.

How the hell has Sammy’s subconscious mind come up with that? A lucky guess? Or  _are_  the dreams actual visions, as Sam’s been insisting all along, and Dean can go and stick the end of his gun into his mouth and pray that hell is not quite as bad as they say it is?

He needs a goddamned cigarette. Doesn’t actually light one up, but he still fucking needs it.

The breeze is picking up, sending the tree boughs shaking and some of the birds flying away to steadier perches. The weatherman did say something about the wind, but luckily no rain was mentioned.

Dean wets his lips and allows his teeth to slowly drag across his bottom one as memories that were buried three forevers ago start resurfacing, prompted by Sam’s assholery. He can honest-to-god feel the blush creeping up his face this time.

There’s nothing about Dean that could still be called virginal, and that has been so since two weeks after his sweet sixteenth. Lord knows he’s always loved wet pussy better than the Impala and beer put together, but he was also too wild, too bold and brave to say no to other types of pleasure when they were offered, and  _boy_ , the things men used to offer Dean back in his twink years when only a handful of girls in the world could’ve held a candle to his own beauty…

So yeah, Dean’s been the bitch a couple of times for the men he deemed worthy of it. He knows what dick feels like, what dick tastes like, and used to swallow entire loads while wearing nothing but a princessy smile on his face.

But that was before, way before; he put an end to all that the day he picked Sammy up in Palo Alto and made him the only remaining man in his life.

In truth, the male to female ratio of Dean’s fuck-buddies has always been around one to ten, so he didn’t end up missing out on too much fun when he starting saying no to the men that were interested in him while on the road with his brother - but now that he’s thinking about it, Dean counts a good two years that have passed since he’s let a man put a dick anywhere near his mouth.

But god, does he still remember that last encounter vividly.

It was a sweltering midsummer night in Tennessee. The guy was a biker in his late thirties, a bit taller than Sammy and smoking hot. He owned a Harley that was almost as sexy as the Impala, and he taught Dean a trick or two. Squeezing the thumb of his left hand into his palm to kill off the gag reflex sounded weird as fuck, but it ended up being very efficient. He petted Dean’s head while murmuring what a good and obedient and pretty little boy he was, before bending him over the bike on the side of a dirt road leading nowhere in particular and breeding him bare so thoroughly that Dean almost bit his fingers off while waiting for the STD test results a few weeks later.

So to summarize, it’s true: after Jimmy, Dean’s sure he could go down on a man better than even the best back-alley sweetheart.

But Sam  _shouldn’t be able to know that,_ Dean thinks in dismay.

“Oh, and, apparently, we’ll be  _super_  into houseplants one day,” Sam’s slightly muffled voice suddenly hollers from somewhere inside the cabin, derailing Dean’s self-destructive train of thought. There’s a ceramic echo to the sound – he’s in the bathroom then - and Dean’s kinda amazed that he was so lost in his own head that he didn’t notice him go back in at all.

Predictably, his baby brother drags his feet back out on the balcony only a few moments later, now fully dressed, and that’s just – ew.

“Dude, go take a fucking shower,” Dean barks out in exasperation, nose scrunching in disgust. He can live with sweat and grime if he has to – those come with their job, after all – but dried jizz reeks like nothing else in the world, spilled guts included.

“I washed it out on the sink,” Sam placates him with a tight smile as he lifts up a blue tee covered with unbuttoned flannel to show off a squeaky clean belly as proof. “So, guessing by the way you zoned out on me - no gag reflex after all?” he tries to keep up the casual tone, but it fails him midway and the words end up laden with uneasiness.

Dean huffs as the younger man moves to share the balcony’s corner with him again, but he doesn’t protest the proximity.

“And what else, Sammy?” Dean pissily dodges the question with his own.

He picks up his gaze up from a suspiciously rustling currant bush and meets the hazel of his brother’s eyes with significant effort. His calloused hands are gripping the balcony’s shiny wooden railing almost hard enough to make a dent. “I’ll trade the Impala for a minivan and we’ll get a dog to wrap the whole damned thing up?” he spits out. There’s a tremble in his fingers that now needs conscious effort to be kept hidden.

“We’ll have this Chinese evergreen named Léon,” Sam supplies after a moment instead of giving Dean’s last provocation a direct answer, sounding unintentionally melancholic as he reminisces on what took the prize as the weirdest revelation of last night’s trip to the future.

A chuckle escapes him as Dean’s features slowly start shifting into bemusement from the bizarreness of Sam’s statement.

“Which you’ll fuss over more than you do the Impala. Dude, I swear, you’ll be making me take that thing outside to  _get its sunlight_ ,” he adds, dimpled cheeks blooming into throaty laughter as the memory of the sharp yet intoxicating smell of fresh spring rain floods him - the climb of the mossy, slippery slope covering their windowless bunker as he took the houseplant out for a walk as if it was a dog in need of a piss, truly feeling like something he experienced not five hours ago.

“Andlisten to you bitch about brown tips along the way,” Sam explains with an exaggerated eye-roll just to see if Dean will explode with a huffy  _‘I’d never!’_  like he wasn’t already known for babying inanimate objects.

“Yeah, right,” is the very weak but adequately peevish response Dean chooses to go with just to stop his mouth from opening and closing fish-like in indignation. Sam struggles to keep a straight face yet again when he notices his brother’s cheeks tinting, the older man’s brain clearly trying to process just how plausible that particular bit of information sounds.

And this is actually not too bad, Sam thinks, all things considered.

Dean apparently won’t be running for the hills just yet, which is great. Sure, right now he’s staring at Sam like a second head’s spurted out of his baby brother’s shoulders and he doesn’t approve of Sam’s intention of keeping it, but Sam can handle the scrutiny.

“For fuck’s sake, Sam,” Dean bursts out, shaky hands rising to rub at somewhat bloodshot eyes.

“And what else? Is the goddamned dog gonna be named Matilda?” Dean grinds out, all pursed lips with the frown cemented on his face at this point. His eyes are kept carefully away from Sam to hide the uncertainty he’s feeling and locked on the multi-colored birdfeeder where a blessedly unbothered finch is helping itself to some fresh seeds Sam’s poured in yesterday.

“No dog,” Sam actually smiles at that, fondly, somewhat indulgently, his own gaze following the direction of the gold-speckled one and noticing the happy little visitor too.

“But you’ll be practically cuffing yourself to the stove, cooking and baking and playing housewife for half the day like you used to back when we were kids, so there’s also that,” he adds, grin forcedly toned down to merely cheeky instead of shit-eating in an effort to keep his big brother’s hand on the railing and away from Sam’s jaw instead.

“Go fuck yourself, Sam,” Dean bites out like Sam’s just accused him of making pie out of newborn puppies. He refuses to look at his brother, pretends instead to be interested in the now preening finch. It seems that he’s tragically unable to keep the slow, molasses-thick trickle of unease from sliding between himself and Sammy in spite of valiant efforts to retain at least a semblance of their normal dynamic. As consequence, soon after Sam finishes with his chortling, both of the brothers fall silent again, each on his own side of the balcony, and each devoured by his own worries and fears.

Frustrated with Dean’s admittedly justified vexation, Sam pulls long fingers through brushed out, now tangle-free chestnut colored strands. The motion does not end up granting much ease as he watches Dean’s strong shoulders struggle to keep from sagging. It’s painful for Sam to think that no matter what happens, Dean just can’t seem to catch a break.

Sam’s in the same pot as his brother, sure, but it’s different for him. Somehow, strangely –  _astonishingly_  - Sam ended up being the stronger one out of the two of them. He’s like an oak tree; it would take the strongest of winds for him to crack, whereas Dean is like cottonwood in comparison - though messy and weedy and downright invasive, he’s brittle to the touch of even a modest breeze, no matter how tough he likes to present himself to the world.

Dean’s finally showing genuine interest, and though there definitely arethings to be told to his brother, after a moment’s reflection, with a slight shake of the head Sam decides that he won’t be doing either of them any favors in the long run if he spills all of the dreamworld’s secrets at once, causal loops be damned.

That is,  _if_ they’re even a rule Sam’s powers have to abide by.

Yeah, events from visions have been changed in the past, but there was so much of Yellow Eyes’ tinkering behind the curtain that even  _that_ could’ve been orchestrated to give Sam a false sense of having an edge over him or something. The truth is that Sam just has no way of finding out the rules of the game before actually finishing it.

If it’s gonna go down the way he fears it will – if these visions truly are something set in stone by causality – then it doesn’t really matter what road he takes, since the destination will be the same in the end. And if that’s so, then he might as well try his best to find a course that will lead to taking minimal damage on the way there.

Though, from what he’s seen hiding under Future Dean’s clothes, ‘minimal’ just might be the wrong word to use.

The way Sam feels right now is that his best option is to ease Dean into the situation slowly, gently. To keep any mention of those awful scars for last, lest Dean decides to storm the forest with nothing but a homemade slingshot and his dick in his hand, just to prove Sam wrong by trying to kill the beast without sustaining injury and ending up killing himself instead in the process.

God, how nervous that thought is making him. It really makes him shudder. No, Sam thinks, he won’t be telling Dean any of it just yet.

Feeling battered by having to internally debate retrocausality (of all things) at six in the morning, Sam casts his brother another sideways glance, his breath this time actually hitching at the sight of the Cupid’s bow laying on top of Dean’s plump kisser.

Fuck.                                                             

 _God_ , the dreams have fucked with his head completely. He can no longer remember whether Dean’s always been this mesmerizingly beautiful or if it had become so  _after_ he’d found out the exact face he makes as he shoots a load all over himself while getting split in two by Sam’s cock. Sweat will start breaking on his skin if he doesn’t break that line of thought – hell, his dick will start to stir in its confines again, Sam realizes, mind still sound enough to be horrified by the concept.

It takes a decent amount of effort for him to coerce his mood back into at least semi-relaxed, but he smoothes it down with some Dean-patented clammy-handed rail gripping.

And Dean, despite the dizzy halo of cartoon stars that’s been spinning around his head since the first broken moan escaped his brother and woke Dean up, realizes that something’s not quite right with this picture. It takes a minute of pondering at all the things Sam’s said to him this morning, but the conclusion he comes to is that Sam ain’t exactly acting like himself here. The thought knocks suddenly at the back door of Dean’s mind, sweaty and flustered and apologetic for being this obnoxiously late. Because the sun’s shinin’, the birds are chirping, and Sam is pulling a goddamned Freaky Friday on Dean with all the sex jokes and the teasing Dean’s kinda ready to beat the living shit out of him for.

The thing is, Sam’s never comfortable with this type of crap, especially not at this level; never makes jabs so spicy that they serve as conversational deterrents so efficient that they conveniently make Dean back ten miles away – and  _oooh_ …

_That little fucker._

A ghost of a twitch starts to make itself known in the corner of Dean’s eye as the silence persists, thickening around them as the angry little cloud above Dean’s head blackens. Chance of storms: too goddamned high.

He’s got just enough peripheral vision on his brother to be able to observe the gradual changes on the little shit’s face and recognize what they mean. Mirth from before that Dean doesn’t doubt was genuine is dissipating just a bit too quickly, leaving behind a strained smile stretched on Sam’s face. His stance is too rigid as well; there’s a sway to relaxedness that’s currently absent from his brother’s body, and  _there_  – he’s back to gripping the railing just like Dean was minutes ago to stop the don’t-want-you-sniffing-out-my-secret jitters.

So Sam is up to something.

Or hiding something.

Or both.

And Dean believes that he’s just given himself away. Whatever the fuck it is, this type of shit is never a herald of good news.

Sammy was never one for outright lying - oh no, too much of a morals-preaching cherub for that - but lies of omission the asshole’s got fucking  _mastered,_ as a younger and much more gullible Dean learned the hard way on that awful day all those years ago when he realized that not fucking once mentioning college  _didn’t_ actually mean that his kid brother wasn’t planning on attending.

The nearby crescendo of the rustling bush pulls Dean back from his faraway thoughts as a tiny something with an impressively bushy tail jumps out of it, promptly running the hell away in a frantic blur of motion once panicked little eyes spot the two men that most definitely look like they eat squirrel offspring.

Lucky escape for the little critter,  _phew_.

And there’s still enough softness left inside of Dean that he can’t help but be endeared by the ridiculous sight that so suddenly sprung up on him out of nowhere.

“I bet that’s the little guy that went off with all the peanuts you left out last night,” he murmurs, shaking his head like an indulgent parent. Something that might be called a smile starts to pull at his lips, but it dies away as soon as he turns to look at Sam again. Though Dean can’t exactly put his finger on it, it’s obvious to him that there’s something not quite right in the lines of his brother’s face.

Was Sam not once better at this game, or is it just that Dean got better at reading him as time went by?

“What the fuck are you not telling me, Sammy?” Dean decides to just cut to the chase because fuck it, subtlety has never been his strong suit. His voice is flat, revealing no emotion, but some of his unease ends up showing as he crosses his arms tightly across his chest, causing the spoon in the mug to clank loudly against the ceramic from somewhere under his left armpit.

“And just how much worse could it get from the stuff you’ve already told me?”

And yeah, there’sthat guilty face Dean’s no stranger to. He’s really lucky that one of Sam’s lovelier features is turning into an open book once caught in mischief.

“Look,” there’s only a brief pause before Sam starts in a rush of air, timidly.

“The vision was pretty much the same format as yesterday. Nothing new or stranger than before _._ It was just the two of us going through what I assume is the daily routine. I spent most of the day going through the books again while you washed the car, cleaned some of the guns, went to the store, cooked us dinner... honestly, other than the contents of the books themselves, the most remarkable discovery I've made is the ridiculous amount of plants we’ll be able to keep alive considering the place is a  _bunker_. I don’t know how that place gets its power, but I’m guessing we’ll be spending a fortune on utility bills one day.”

Dean huffs, very much unconvinced by what Sam’s trying to sell him, his eyebrows raised and sending the ‘ya think I’m stupid or somethin’?’ signal.

Sam, starting to feel alarmingly cornered from the way Dean just doesn’t seem like he’ll be letting the matter go any time soon, at least has the common decency to cast his eyes to the floor as he brings out the heavy artillery and solemnly says: “It ended the same way as the last one. Obviously.”

Now  _there’s_  a deterrent if Dean ever saw one. God, Sam’s making this too easy; so far it’s going just how Dean predicted it would.

But he doesn’t back off like the little fucker clearly intended him to. Instead, he puts one hand on his own slim hip sassily, and with the other he grabs his brother’s chin to turn his face so that he can look him right in those glistening hazels and shoot the overgrown baby the bitchiest are-you-fucking-kidding-me glare that his pretty face can muster.

Sam jerks his head away from the grip of fingers that smell far too much of tobacco, breaking the eye contact after barely a second, but the green gaze had held him captive long enough for the younger man to become aware that Dean’s truly caught the scent of his secrets. And Jesus fuck, Sam thinks as panic slowly starts to overtake him - does he already have no other options left other than spitting it all out, most likely causing Dean to work himself into the most suicidal snit of the century?

“It’s just weird _,_ man, okay?” he practically squeaks out, reaching for his forehead to futilely try and massage away an oncoming headache.

Turning away from Dean, he starts pacing along the length of the balcony, his footsteps ringing heavily off the tiles. His usual eloquence goes down the drain and he fumbles with his words in hope he’ll find something else, something safer for his brother to latch onto: “Hour upon hour of having no control over the body I’m in and just living alongside this super-weird, chirpy-as-hell version of you in that place – God, Dean, that  _place,_ if you’d only let me tell you more about it _-_  feeling both like an intruder and a goddamned Peeping Tom from all the shit I’ve seen,  _and_  like I belong there at the same time.”

“Then there’s the actual lifestyle itself. Dude, just from the limited amount of things I’ve managed to pick up on: we use the gym on a daily basis, Tuesdays are movie nights, on Saturdays we eat out at the same little Italian restaurant it takes us over an hour to get to by car. Breakfast is either smoothies or oatmeal, no exception – stop looking at me like that, I’m  _not_  joking around. You do most of the cooking and I’m in charge of watering the entire oxygen-sucking indoor forest I’ve already told you about.”

Though even more frustrated than before, Sam stops to lean against the rain once again, and with a small voice he adds: “If it’s really us, we’ll be changed. But I guess that’s what time does to you if it gets its chance.”

“Yeah. Tell me about it,” Dean starts grouchily, almost warily, but a small laugh breaks out unannounced at the very last syllable at the unfathomable thought of one day becoming Sam’s kale-eating wife, surprising both of the men. Sam throws Dean a sudden look that would’ve been more appropriate for a golden horn sprouting out of Dean’s forehead than him just chuckling lightly.

God, of all the shit they’ve gotten themselves into over the years, this stuff really takes the cake, Dean thinks as he scratches the back of his head nervously just for the want of having something to do with his hands. He’s so far gone that he can’t even wipe the damned smile off his face. He just can’t believe  _this_ is the conversation they’re having on a morning so lovely that it should’ve served for nothing but leisure and relaxation.

“You’ll keep singing along to old Frankie Laine vinyl records, for one,” Sam chirps after seeing an opportunity to break some of the tension.

“ _Sam_ ,” Dean grinds out through the last huffs of his laughter. The request was obviously a rhetorical one.

“Sorry,” Sam replies, adequately sheepish, but at least a genuine smile is back on his face.

“So you believe me?” the younger man asks hopefully, his heart sitting high in his throat from all the anxiety thrumming through him and threatening to suffocate him with each consecutive beat.

Shaking his head no almost apologetically, Dean turns towards Sam. The ever-present need to be close to his brother is working as an interminable background process in his mind, and he leaves only the minimal distance between the two of them that could still be called polite.

Some of their father’s pensiveness visibly seeps into the first of the lines setting on Dean’s face in that moment. The frown that John Winchester trademarked follows immediately after, and Sam can hear the heavy weight of his brother’s words as Dean solemnly says: “Oh, I believe that you saw what you’re telling me, Sammy. I just don’t believe it’s the future you’re sein’.”

Sam only scoffs in answer, disappointed, even though he should’ve expected such an answer. He shoots his brother a frustrated look before breaking the unpleasant eye-contact and turning away to send his gaze back over the distant mountaintops.

An even rowdier gust of wind forces its way through the trees boughs then, shaking up just about every leaf in the cabin’s surroundings and sending a good portion of the critters either running for cover or flying to safer perches. The significantly cooler air hitting the exposed bits of the brothers’ skin draws a shudder from both of them.

Well, Sam thinks resignedly, the apparent change in the weather at least makes it a bit less of a shame that they’ve grounded themselves to the cabin, since they wouldn’t have been able to go hiking or exploring anyway. Also, thank God he did the grocery shopping yesterday in case the wind decides to turn into something more news-cover worthy.

Wrapping strong arms around broad shoulders to help his body in preserving the heat in his blue flannel, Sam starts rocking on his heels to get his blood flowing a bit faster. Feeling weary and already worn out even though it’s early morning and he’s just had his coffee, he sighs as he makes peace with the fact that this whole day is probably already ruined.

There’s a little iron-wrought table siting in the middle of the balcony surrounded by four currently cushionless chairs. After taking the last cold sip of his coffee Dean places the empty mug on it. With his hands now free, he pensively starts rubbing his face. God, he doesn’t want to do this, the thinks. Doesn’t want to poke around a subject that has incest-porn spewing out of his kid brother’s mouth upon the slightest provocation, but he just might have to start yelling at Sam if the younger man soon doesn’t tell him why he’s acting weird.

Sam, very much used to Dean’s pissy moods, can read the thoughts wreaking havoc in his brother’s mind with just a glance. Consequently, he’s starting to feel like he’s sharing the small area with a huffing, glaring Billy-goat that’s about to charge and impale him on sharpened horns if he don’t think fast enough. The air around them might as well be buzzing from how much they’re both aware of the unspoken secrets hanging between them like foul-smelling corpses swaying in the wind.

“Anyway, what’s for breakfast?” Sam tries wheedling out of it one last time, his hungry mind already tricking him into smelling caramelized sugar. He pops the knuckles on both hands and lifts his arms above his head to stretch out his spine. He goes for an easy, satisfied smile when done, but Dean only snarls a low “Sam,  _for fucks sake_ -”

Well, shit, Sam thinks, mood deflating again.

The image of those goddamned scars flashes unbidden before his eyes again; pale and taut, stretching down the length of his brother’s naked body, shimmering as they caught the light with each thrust of Sam’s hips –  _don’t think about that now, you can’t think about that now, don’t think about that now_  - the leftovers of an injury that most certainly almost killed his brother.

But that’s the way it’s obviously gotta go, it’s how messing with time works; Sam knows this.

God, he’s fucked if he doesn’t think of something fast in order to stop his brother from screwing with the timeline by getting himself eaten in those woods instead of just banged up really hard. Sure, his brother is a professional hunter that knows what can and cannot be done, but he’s also the world’s stubbornest hothead when his horns lock with Sam’s own, and that’s when the lines of skillful and just plain cocky start to blur.

Sam casts his gaze towards the forest again. He takes a moment to scrutinize the visible side of the imperfect circle of trees surrounding the cabin that since yesterday evening stands connected by a red cotton string off of which hangs just about every hoodoo trinket the boys have had stashed in the car.

Useless, all of it, as Sam’s been insisting it would be while Dean just kept pissily hanging up bells and infant bones like Halloween had merged into an early Christmas.

Sam shakes his bangs out again. He’s certain that the only purpose it all served was just to make the older man feel at least somewhat in control of the situation, for a while at least. Nothing wards off visions,  _nothing;_ it’s not like Dean doesn’t know this. The freaky crap surrounding them and making the cabin look like a horror-movie set could only help in warding against demons, witches…maybe some spirits, but even that is heavily dependent on the aura type.

Though, speaking of witches…

Holy hell! How could Sam forget?

The epiphany that a bone to throw to the angry dog fuming impatiently beside him exists after all hits him like a freight train.

Though it’s certainly a major detail, up until this point the beginning of the dreams – the crimson mare carrying him through strange woods and flower fields - felt unimportant enough in comparison to Dean’s scars that it had completely slipped from Sam’s mind. But he’s remembered it now. And he just might be able to use the information to his advantage.

“ _Fine,_ ” Sam hisses. Inspiration churns through him; he rolls his eyes bitchily, knowing that Dean’s watching him from the corner of his eye. Sam sees his brother’s clammy fists unclenching from what must’ve became a painful grip on the rail.

“You were right yesterday. About someone controlling my dreams,” he confesses honestly, watching as the statement sends nigh-visible gears turning behind Dean’s eyes.

Sam can’t remember the last time he’s felt like such a douche, but he feels like he _must_ lead Dean down the garden path in order to salvage the timeline. All hell will let loose if he gives Dean a solid piece of information that he could fight. The witch is still something abstract; the werewolf is more than real enough to challenge.

“What?” Dean asks, taking the last two steps towards Sam, not caring at all that he’s getting right up in his brother’s personal space. Happiness – no, fucking  _elation_  – is now overtaking him, and Sam would’ve bet anything in that moment that if he pressed his fingers to his brother’s jugular vein he would find the pulse at an erratic pace.

Well, his brother certainly took the bait, now Sam just has to hope that this doesn’t end up blowing right back up in his face. 

“I get…” Sam starts, only to realize that he doesn’t really know how to properly condense in words the process that happens after he falls asleep. “Ferried, I guess,” is what he settles for, but it already sounds clumsy and vague as he says it. “By a woman that manifests herself to me as a red mare. She’s the one that somehow takes me from here to the future. Or at least helps me to do it.”

“A witch,” Dean hisses quietly, eyes acquiring an angry glimmer from the final confirmation that he was right in his belief that someone’s been tampering with his brother’s mind after all.

Dean knew it.

He fucking  _knew_ it. 

Sam, feeling guiltier by the second and spending a fuckton of energy in effort not to show it, watches as Dean’s mood turns from that belonging to a man hanging off the edge of desperation to that of one with a purpose. His brother’s mind is obviously already plotting a detailed course of action as green eyes flick back and forth from the door of their bedroom and the edge of the balcony where the hanging trinkets are starting to sound like wind-chimes in the quickening breeze.

“Yeah. Most likely a witch,” Sam echoes, careful eyes locked on Dean’s face, “but she’s manifesting herself to me as an animal because I don’t know what she actually looks like.”

Dean nods, but Sam can tell that his thoughts are already too far away and that his brother didn’t register a word of what he’d just said.

“Dean, I don’t  _know_  her yet,” Sam emphasizes, but much to his frustration ends up ignored.

In a sudden flurry of movement, Dean walks straight past him and back into the bedroom, heavy footsteps of steel-capped boots stomping over to the solid wood wardrobe. Not ten seconds later the previously neat room turns into absolute chaos: unzipped duffels taken out from the bottom drawer and thrown to the floor, half of their clothes transferred to the bed, all of their flannel grabbed in one go and draped over the back of the armchair, hangers included.

Sam rushes towards his brother in order to stop him from mixing the dirty shoes and ammo with the clean clothes getting thrown into the duffels, but Dean’s bellow: “ _We’re going back to South Dakota_ , _dammit,_ ” ends up sounding so much like their father’s at his worst that it chills Sam to the bone and brings his stride to a halt in the doorway.

“Seriously?” Sam grinds through his teeth, eyes simmering from the ire within. 

Dean doesn’t even look up to acknowledge Sam, but at least he’s still organizing the clothes properly, leaving the shoes by the bed and the ammo away from their underwear.

“We’ve practically made holy ground out of this place and it’s still not good enough. Bobby’s panic room is the only place left with strong enough wards to-”

“But I don’t _know_ her!” Sam frustratingly repeats himself. His voice booms loud enough to finally make his brother cease his hurricaning through their belongings. Dean’s left standing wide-eyed in the middle of the room, fumbling with the armful of jeans he’s just gathered that he doesn’t quite know what to do with in that moment. One deep-blue denim pair slips from his hands and drops to the floor. Neither of the brothers bothers with picking it up as they stare at each other, both their chests rising and falling harshly.

Now that he’s got Dean’s attention again, Sam continues: “I gotta know and have some sort of a connection with the spell-caster for them to be able to affect me to this extent. Shit, Dean, you know how it goes with witches, what they’re like. Tell me of one we haven’t whacked yet that’s powerful enough  _and_ knows me that well to be able to fuck with me in this manner.”

Dean’s eyebrows scrunch up in confusion. It’s not that he wants to admit it, but after only a moment of contemplation he realizes that Sam’s got him there. He’s still for a moment, but soon he finds himself shaking his head no; now that Sam’s asking, he really can’t think of anyone who’d fit that description. Frustrated, he snarls: “So what the hell are you tryna tell me, Sammy?”

And heaven help Sam not to strangle the man he loves more than anything in the world if he doesn’t stop snapping at him like that. Fighting for composure, he explains: “That it doesn’t matter where we are. That, whoever she is, she’s doing it from the other end. From the  _future_.”

And suddenly the room turns so silent that you could hear a damned pin drop.

Dean is left just standing there, stunned from the impact of the weight of Sam’s words. He’s looking at him like a confused pup trying to figure out whether the ball had really flown or if the owner’s fucking with him again.

To Sam the silence starts feeling like it’ll last until the planet freezes again, though a dull pain in Dean’s hand soon breaks him out of his trance. He finds himself clenching the strap of the duffle he’s reached for to dump the jeans in with a grip so tight that the sharp-edged synthetic material has almost broken his skin. Staring at the red mark on his palm he thinks: so, the bitch is from the future, huh? Shit, that would mean that what Sam’s seen really might end up…

_No._

No, he can’t think about it now. Not now. Not with Sammy in the room.

“But I’m also goddamned certain she was asked to do it. That this isn’t some sort of an attack,” Sam rambles on as if he doesn’t notice that his brother’s rage meter is filling up to the point where he’s on the very edge of exploding. “The spell almost drained all her magic the first time. Dean, she gotta be an ally because it almost killed her to do it,” he insists.

A charging bull might be considered friendly in comparison to the way Dean is looking at his brother right now. Dean can’t believe what he’s hearing. He can’t believe that Sam is actually trying to defend the witch’s actions after coming at Dean with  _you know how they’re like_  only minutes earlier.

Because evil and backstabbing, _that’s_ what witches are like.

Dean throws the duffel on the floor with enough force to have the thing slide under the bed, rolled up socks going to places so dark only a broom will later be able to reach them. He drops the rest of the jeans unceremoniously on the bed. It takes him five strides to reach Sam where the younger man’s leaning against the wooden door-frame, half concealed by the wispy drapes. He stops only once he’s gotten so close up in Sam’s face that their breaths mingle.

A bit worried for his teeth, Sam flinches at the proximity and glues his back to the wall.

“You think I’d one day become mad enough to ask for that kind of shit?” Dean spits out accusingly. “To invite someone from the enemy ranks to mess with my baby brother’s head and have them send out visions of the nastiest-”

“They’re  _not_  visions,” Sam interjects sharply, not allowing Dean to finish the sentence. He doesn’t have time to properly think about it right now, but it shocks him to feel something in his chest pull painfully at Dean’s choice of words. What, he’s going to start feeling defensive over this shit? It’s one thing to reluctantly allow himself to somewhat enjoy a show he has no choice to not only watch but experience with every one of his senses, but this crap is new.

Also, Dean really shouldn’t get this close to him right now.

Not when he’s angry, not when he’s distracted enough to forget that Sam could grab him so easily, have him face to the wall in the time it takes to blink and press what will soon be a fully-erect dick right into the sweet swell of hunt-trained ass unless Sam stops having these thoughts immediately.

Rotted - his brain has rotted away during the course of only two nights. What is Sam going to  _do_?

He tries to squirm away to the side, but Dean smacks his hand on the wall, denying him the freedom to do so.

Dean’s face has acquired yet another comical expression at Sam’s comment. He’s really reaching the limit of his patience here. “Then what the hell are they?” he asks, letting Sam smell the coffee on his breath.

And there it is, Sam thinks – the right question, finally; the answer to which will cover just about everything. Now, if only Sam knew how to explain it to Dean without getting pecked to death like a corn-cob thrown to a hungry hen as a result.

He can do this, he tells himself encouragingly. Dean wouldn’t bite his head off just because he won’t like what he’ll hear. He can do this.

“Yesterday I was still confused by some of the details,” Sam starts, eager for Dean to understand, “but this second trip was enough for me to figure out what’s going on.”

“Of course it was, Einstein,” Dean snorts in derision. He finally takes a step back into the room and shakes his head, palm dragging across his mouth.

“Just shut up and listen,” Sam snaps, nostrils flaring.

A glimmer of curiosity admittedly is pushing through the green of Dean’s irises, against all the rest of his stormy feelings. He  _is_  dying to know what Sam wants to tell him, no matter how bratty he’s acting. He reluctantly nods his head tamely after a moment, though his cover-girl plump lips still remain peevishly pursed.

Sam stares at him for a while with steam practically coming out from his ears, but he continues.

“While I’m asleep and visiting the bunker, I’m actually living the future, not just observing it,” Sam says. He’s giving it his all to keep his voice as soothing and even as he can, which is a hard task considering that his patience reserves have almost been depleted at this point. “In fact, if the dreams keep happening, I believe I’ll even be able to gain control of the body at some point, if my future self will allow it.”

Unsurprisingly, Dean’s eyebrows fly to his hairline at that.

“The base for the transfer is my own power, but it’s amplified and steered by the witch’s magic. Due to the nature of the events I’m being shown, I don’t think I’m there to see what needs changing - which would be the point of a regular vision – but that I’m there to get directions on what to make sure _happens_.”

And yeah, okay, maybe Sam should’ve kept that bit for later, when Dean would’ve been in a saner mood, because the info seems to have sent his brother one breath away from hyperventilating. This isn’t gonna end well, Sam thinks. In fact, tying himself down to busy railroad tracks would probably end better in comparison.

Well, he’s already set this shit in motion; there’s no stopping it now.

“This whole thing with the dreams,” Sam emphasizes by twirling his fingers by the side of his head, “is _us_ from the future ensuring that things go the way they’re supposed to. With the way causal loops most commonly work, it’s not even being done to  _form_  the timeline, just to  _maintain_ it,” Sam finishes with added gravity, his heart stuck in his throat.

Doesn’t Dean see that this is not his fault? That it’s not  _this_ version of him creating this situation?

“You’re out of your mind,” Dean says, not even able to look his brother in the eye at this point. The sound of his voice is more of a whisper than anything, thin and brittle, but still venomously accusing enough to add another chink to Sam’s battered heart.

Sam, just about to go on the defensive, halts when he spots a barely noticeable shadow flicker across his brother’s face. It’s a small thing, but he realizes that there’s actually something delicate and bruised about Dean right now. As if Sam’s words fell like sharpened blades on his skin and hurt him, though he’s pretending otherwise.

“Dean,” Sam tries to reach his brother with a shaky voice. He realizes that he’s fucked up, overshared, pushed too far. But Dean shakes his head no, rejecting the concern.

Dean turns his back on his brother and walks all the way back to the bed with a stunned expression on his face. Sam watches slender fingers flow through the mess of dirty-blonde spikes as if entranced. His eyes follow first one weapon-hardened hand, then the other as it reaches up to the hair. By the end Dean’s left standing in the middle of the room holding his head in his hands as if he’s trying to stop it from splitting in half. It’s definitely not a pretty sight.

This is the quiet before the storm, Sam thinks as he watches his brother fight his own body for control over his breathing. The sharp inhales and wheezy hisses amidst the exhales pierce the room like glass drops breaking on a metal surface. It has to be that, because there’s no way his brother would just roll over without a fight. No, he must be gathering his thoughts, organizing mental troops to attack everything Sam’s just told him.

But whatever was about to follow, whether Dean was planning to try and calmly talk him down from his beliefs or spew accusations and call him crazed, Sam is not going to find out.

Through the open balcony door a noise suddenly reaches the brothers, one that can instantly be recognized as a rumbling car engine approaching. Something large and powerful, judging by the sound; most likely a diesel-fueled four-by-four like the boys’ late father used to go for after upgrading from the Chevy classic he’s gifted his elder son with. It startles them both from how unexpected it is to hear the vroom of a man-made machine in their lonesome wilderness where usually only a gentle blend of birdsong and the wind can be heard.

Dean, the half of their two-man team that’s always practicing overbearingly paranoid diligence, immediately gathers his composure and rushes past Sam and back on the balcony in order to get a peek at the unannounced visitors. Unfortunately for him, by the time he gets in position, the sound of tires on asphalt has already turned into that of tires hitting the gravel of the cabin’s driveway, which is where the angle of the cabin doesn’t allow Dean to see anything. He clicks his tongue in annoyance and moves to get back into the bedroom.

He didn’t think anything could happen to make him even more frustrated after Sam dropped all of the previous bombs on him, but here they fucking are...

“Seen it?” Sam, the other part of their little team that  _doesn’t_ see the feds jumping from behind the curtains yelling ‘gotcha!’ at every turn, asks as if the frown on Dean’s face doesn’t already hold the answer to the question.

“Guns,” is all Dean grunts in response.

It’s an order, and that sort of behavior is not helping with the overall mood in the room, but this is not the sort of situation where Sam would be vain and foolish enough to complain. It’s most likely just the neighbors or something, but since enemies have on occasion been known to find them in stranger places than the one they’re currently ‘vacationing’ in, he can’t exactly begrudge Dean for wanting to practice caution.

There’s no further talk necessary; the protocol for these situations has been embedded in them since before they were gawky teenagers.

Both of the brother’s walk over to the still unmade bed, each to their own side, overturning fluffy pillows to grab the pair of weapons they’ve hidden under them on the day of arrival to the cabin. By the time the doorbell rings downstairs, they’re already tucking the guns into the backs of their pants and covering them with their flannel shirts.

There’s not even a second between the echo of the chime reaching them upstairs and Dean rushing to overtake Sam in the doorway as they head for the hallway, the older man leaving his baby brother to grumpily follow in his shadow.

They walk down the stairs as soundlessly as prowling mountain lions would, avoiding all three spots where the wood tends to creek. When they reach the entrance hall, Sam takes position behind a wooden pillar a small distance behind his brother, and it’s Dean who opens the door to see who on earth wishes to disturb the Winchester brothers at this ungodly hour.


	4. Chapter 4

 

“I still can’t believe Dugan told you about this stuff. The guy should’ve kept his mouth shut,” Sam scoffs.

He’s sitting on the living room’s obnoxiously floral two-seater, shoulders tight and hands braced on his knees. He’s still feeling raw from what his brain has stubbornly decided to dub as his and Dean’s first lover’s spat, but there are more urgent matters to attend to right now. That was the hunt that knocked on their door, so he’s gotta pull himself together, fast. There’ll be plenty time for dealing with his brother after they’re done here.

 _A lifetime_ , if he plays his cards right, some treacherous part of his brain coyly adds. Sam squeezes his eyes shut for a second at the involuntary thought, has to fight off a shudder.

Dean’s sitting by his baby brother’s side, frowny-faced about the fact that every slight shuffle is bringing him closer to the dip Sam’s heavier body has created. The damned couch is so small and overstuffed he has to grab the armrest in order to avoid sinking right into Sam’s lap. Despite his discomfort, though, he’s nodding vigorously in agreement with Sam’s huffed out statement. The info he’s just heard from the elderly couple sitting opposite them in their respective sofas ( _not_ obnoxiously floral and actually comfortable) pissed him off just as much as it did Sam. Dugan, the hunter that was here before them had no legitimate reason for telling the civvies about the existence of the supernatural. Not one. True, it’s not like there’s an actual hunter’s code out there, but it’s just not how things are _done._

“Sammy, I understand where you’re coming from,” Mister Porter - Mike, as the old man insists on being called – says solemnly, rubbing at a mustache so big and bristly it’s making him resemble a walrus. Mike’s a big man, almost as tall as Sam but much, much wider, and heavy enough to make the cabin’s hardwood floors creak under his feet when he walks. “But it’s better that he did.”

Dean grips the armrest just a bit tighter at that, bottling down the instinct to snap at the man for using Sam’s nickname. His cheeks puff out, but he keeps quiet; even Dean knows better than to make a spectacle of himself by giving lip to a retired U.S. army Colonel over something as dumb as a nickname.

Sam, keenly aware of his brother’s idiotic internal struggle, chuckles discreetly enough for their visitors not to notice, but loud enough for Dean to hear.

 _Dick,_ Dean thinks.

He shuffles the last half an inch away from Sam to let his brother know exactly what he’s thinking right now. Sam’s response is a quick smirk sent Dean’s way, followed by the beginning of a smile, and _God_ , please don’t let the Porters notice; Dean really doesn’t want the nice folk to think them lunatics for seemingly not taking their situation seriously enough. He’s barely able to contain all the cataclysmic emotions the interrupted conversation with his brother brought on as it is; he doesn’t need more shit added to his discomfort. 

“I think I would’ve had a heart attack if I saw the beast without knowing about it beforehand,” Mike admits quietly, snapping Dean back from his antsy thoughts. Both of the Winchesters immediately shift back into an appropriately somber mood as the old man leans forward to brace his forearms on his knees, scrubbing at his reddened face with hands larger than Sam’s, which is saying something.

“The shock of it was lessened this way. Made me manage to stand my ground. Would’ve probably started screaming like a little bitch otherwise, and the good Lord only knows what would’ve happened to me then.”

 _Yeah, okay, fair point,_ Dean can’t help but think as Sam laughs fondly at the man’s bluntness, as well as his wife’s discomfort over it. It doesn’t excuse what Dugan did, though, but still...

“ _Mike,”_ Mrs. Porter – Jennie, as the old lady likes being informal as well - scolds the man for his language with a friendly hiss. She’s a head shorter than Dean and looks rake-thin next to her husband, and though she’s all about grace and manners, she’s just about the sweetest woman either of the boys has ever met. Twice already she’s had Mike bring over freshly baked cookies (both boxes surviving less than half an hour after the boys dug in), and more than half the veg in their fridge had come from her garden. Dean’s had a hard time remembering when the last time he’s eaten so much salad was.

“Sorry, darlin’,” Mike apologizes, sheepish. He nods a silent apology to each of the Winchesters, as though he’s not perfectly aware of the fact that a burly pair of men like them swears like sailors on the regular.

Sam smiles at the pair warmly, cranking up his dimpled charm and making sure it radiates off his youthful face in hope of alleviating some of the tension in the room. He’s good at providing comfort like that, always has been. All four of them are pretty shaken up because of what had happened, but he knows it’s up to him and his brother to be the reassuring ones. Jennie bends down to cut them all some more pie, sighing the sigh of three eternities combined, and Dean winks at Mike good-naturedly then, the man winking right back at him.

There’s a hybrid killer-werewolf out there, quite possibly even prowling the cabin’s first line of trees right now; shit could’ve easily hit the fan last night, but it’s important to keep up spirits.

If only Sam wasn’t so prudish and would let him break out the whiskey, Dean thinks miserably as he squirms some more, flinching when his thigh touches Sam’s again. Thankfully, his brother pretends he hadn’t noticed. Dean is _really_ in need of a shot right now, and from the look of it, he’s sure everyone else in the room is, too.

The cabin’s owners, the Porters, are real nice people. Dean guesses that both are in their late sixties, and with the matching silver-grey hair and quirky, round-rimmed glasses, they usually look like some very happy little kid’s grandparents. Right now, however, the pair is looking like death warmed over. They’ve got a white-picket-fence life behind them in which nothing has ever gone wrong, but Sam and Dean now inhabiting their recent-crime-scene rental cabin and listening to a story that’s mind-blowing even by Winchester standards comes as proof that the scales have to end up balanced at _some_ point in life.

What was still just a breeze showing off while the boys were bickering on the balcony had turned into a full blown northerner by the time the new arrivals had settled into their sofas; all the doors and windows of the cabin are shut. There’s a cranberry pie sitting on the coffee table; the smell wafting from the homemade dish is making the room smell like Christmas morning even though the snows are still quite some time away from making an appearance. The porcelain container is still warm, though, and since dawn broke not half an hour ago it can only mean that the lady that made it was up all night baking, the dark circles under her warm brown eyes confirming it.

“You were saying’ something about its legs?” Dean scoots forward to mirror Mike’s position and prompts him to continue his previous speech over a mouthful of pie, waving his fork in the air with the girly rose-design plate clutched to his chest. He hears Sam click his tongue to his left, not too discreetly; the younger man’s clearly unhappy with Dean’s caveman manners.

Mike nods in reply, the movement making his double-chin wobble ridiculously. After a moment of obvious contemplation, the lines of the man’s face set into something Dean interprets as a clear _oh, fuck it_ expression, then he proceeds to lift his heavy body out of the sofa, slowly getting up to his feet.

 _Oh, hell no_ , Dean groans internally when he realizes that charades are ahead as he watches the man awkwardly get into position in front of the unlit fireplace. He just wanted info on the shape of the creature’s hocks so that he can compare that to his knowledge of Chupacabras and similar beasts, maybe to find out how big the claws were if they weren’t retracted, _not_ a damned performance.

“The creature walked like this,” Mike says reluctantly once he’s centered himself on the plush rug and starts… well, trotting is the best – actually, _only_ \- word for it, like a goddamned show-pony, his footsteps falling far too heavy for the imitation of what Dean believes is supposed to be very stealthy monster.

It’s only Sam’s pointed glance that keeps Dean from facepalming. Sure, the guy is trying to be helpful, but nothing about this is saying _werewolf_ , especially with the way the man’s arms are stretched far in front of him, hands bent low at the wrists. It’s just plain-ass uncomfortable to watch; even Sam’s starting to frown, for chrissake.

“And then you both just _stared_ at each other when it noticed you, instead of it mauling you to death?” Dean interrupts before he starts groaning from how cringy it’s starting to get. His words roll over yet another mouthful of pie, disgusting smacking sounds this time accompanying. Sam’s looking like he’s had it with him, shooting Dean a glare so icy that it could make a reasonably-sized glacier squirm with envy.

Mike just nods again, wheezing from his exertion, and walks back to his sofa. The man sinks into it gladly, letting out a satisfied sigh. The sofa’s springs, however, squeal mournfully in reply.

Movement from the side catches Dean’s attention, and it’s only then that he figures out why Sam’s so pissy again. Guilt washes over him when he sees Jennie with her eyes closed and her spidery hand clutching the small golden crucifix hanging from her wrinkly chest. Sam’s gonna kill him; Dean doesn’t have to look at his brother to know that the younger man’s a second away from clapping him on the head for being an insensitive ass, especially once Mike leans over to take his wife’s hand and hold it tightly in support.

Clueless as to what he can do to fix this screwup and feeling his ears starting to redden, Dean does the only thing he can think of: digs back into his plate and tries to make himself busy with the pie in hope that his brother’s gonna let it slide.

But, apparently, it’s not his lucky day.

“Hey!” Dean yelps as Sam grabs for his plate and yanks it out of his protesting hands.

“I apologize about my brother. Sugar makes him stupid,” Sam snaps, pissy as a diva at this point, “ _stupider_ ,” he adds when he has to start fighting his brother’s flapping hands as Dean tries to rescue his pie. Dean’s chances of victory are a sad zero percent, as his reach is no match for Sam’s enormous wingspan. The plate soon loudly clanks against the glass covering the table in the aftermath of their squabble.

They’re both ruffled, huffing messes once the plate is out of Dean’s reach. By the time they remember that they’re not alone in the room, there’s already a decent amount of adoration written in the age-worn faces of the Porters. Dean might’ve been embarrassed, but he’s too busy feeling relieved to see that Jennie’s smiling again.

Grandparents were always just a vague concept for the brothers, but this old couple - Jennie with her fond head-shaking and Mike with a hand held over his jiggling beer-belly and laughing good-naturedly - are certainly letting them have a peek at how it could’ve been, had fate allowed it. Both Sam and Dean feel a twin pang of hurt in their chests upon seing the couple’s loving exasperation with them, but they bury the emotion deep down with all the rest of the Winchester baggage. No point in dwelling on it, and no time for it right now anyway.

“I miss having kids around,” Jennie winks at her husband like the boys aren’t within earshot.

Dean sees Sam’s mouth fall open stupidly, so he decides to be a good brother and save him from the fumbling tirade of apologies that’s on the brink of bursting out of his mouth.

“This is so, _so_ good, Jennie,” he chirps, unbothered by the commentary. He’s gesturing at the pie that’s now out of his reach with the empty fork, the only thing that survived Sammy’s grabby paws.

The woman’s face blooms with happiness at the earnest compliment, instantly shaving off the last of the worry lines from her face.

Happy that he’s been the good guy and helped for a change, Dean sinks back into the cushions, forgetting that he’ll end up glued to his brother’s side if he does. _Well, too late now_ , he thinks as Sam’s warmth starts seeping through worn denim. He closes his eyes in reflex but refuses to flinch away again - because he’s real manly like that - but he’s regrets the move as soon as Sam relaxes too, letting his gigantic body sink completely by Dean’s side, connecting them from shoulder to heel.

Yeah, okay, so it’s not exactly like he’s ended up in his brother’s lap or anything, but from how unhinged Dean is right now, it feels as if he just might’ve.  

Shit, this is too much contact for Sam’s current mindset, Dean decides. He tries not to show it, tries to act unbothered, but he’s not far from squalling like one of the kiddies that have seen how the Boogeyman _really_ looks like when Sam casually lifts his arm and drapes it over the cushions behind Dean’s head. _Shit._ Is this something Sam would’ve done even without the visions? Is Dean being too paranoid? Jesus, the amount of fretting he’s forced to go through is only appropriate for lovelorn teenage girls.  

 _Fucking witches;_ Dean wows to make it his life’s mission to gank every last one of ‘em at that point. Sam just sighs and relaxes into the touch a bit more, arm moving and making contact with the back of Dean’s neck. Dean pales, finally remembering that the usual minimum is three beers or five shots for Sam to get this close to Dean’s body.

_Fuck, fuck, fuck…_

“Do you bake? I can write you a recipe,” Jennie unwittingly comes to Dean’s rescue a millisecond before he propels himself off the couch and into orbit, already reaching for her handbag to find some pen and paper.

“Oh, hell yes,” Dean beams at his white lady-knight and uses the opportunity to straighten his back and scoot his ass back to the blessed edge of the couch where no limb will have to be in contact with his brother anymore. His teeth start showing through a feral smile aimed at the lovely woman when he hears Sam’s subdued huff.

“Please,” he adds, remembering his rudimentary manners, making sure to look both bratty and contrite at the same time. The sight of him like that makes Jennie look like she wants to adopt him. It also makes Sam look like he’d sign him over in a heartbeat.

“Now, I know how stupid that just looked,” Mike uses the opportunity to speak up again when his wife starts rummaging through the alternate universe that is the female handbag, and waves his hand in the direction of fireplace. “Like a fat, old man tryna run up and down the carpet. But I swear _,_ that is _exactly_ how the creature moved. Wobbly, with limbs all over the place, like it was deranged or somethin’,” he adds, and that’s the statement that finally catches the Winchesters full attention.

“Wait _, what?_ ” the boys yelp almost in unison, startling Jennie enough that she abandons her (as of yet fruitless) digging and clutches the bag to her chest.

“Yeah. I mean it,” Mike says, looking Dean dead in the eye. He really needs the young hunters believing him. He feels like all their lives depend on the brothers knowing (and accepting) all the facts. “The funky hand motions, the feet spread ridiculously wide. All of it, I’m tellin’ ya.”

The air in the room manages to shift somehow; if it felt any chillier the Winchesters would’ve pulled out their EMF meters.

“But, that doesn’t-” Dean shakes his head apologetically, struggling with how to take in the new info. “That doesn’t make sense,” he says with all the kindness he can muster, trying not to be a douche and let the man down gently, but Mike’s posture still sags, his face dropping.

“Sickness is not something we’ve ever seen in a monster,” Sam expands on Dean’s statement, drawing Mike’s gaze to his face. “Monsters get weak when they’re hungry or injured, but the rest of the time they’re on the top of their game. If what you’ve seen is real, then this is a first for us.”

That sliver of good vibes they’ve communally managed to get going drains from the room then, replaced instead by uneasiness tightly winding around the four of them like a starved python. Neither Sam nor Dean know what to say to the couple next; both are too preoccupied with wishing they were alone so that they could get Bobby on speakerphone and analyze the new info to hell and back.

A mentally disabled monster? That would be the biggest discovery in the world of hunters since figuring out what God created silver for.

“But, you do believe me, right?” Mike asks, the desperation in the man’s gruff voice almost thick enough to choke.

“We do _._ Mike, we _do,_ we just-” Sam starts insisting as the man’s face drops some more, hands starting to flap urgently…

“Can’t really believe you’re alive to tell the tale, if you want us to be honest,” Dean finishes for him. He regrets it, though, the moment he has to suppress a yowl as Sam’s booted heel connects with his unprotected shin under the coffee table.

Smiling a little at their shenanigans, Mike nods his head, accepting the verdict. Good enough, he thinks, for now at least.

“And when I think of what a good day I’ve had,” the old man grumbles, taking his glasses off to clean them with a handkerchief produced out of a back pocket. “Our youngest sent us the first ultrasound pictures of the new baby. The plumber finally located that damned leaky pipe that’s been giving us trouble for weeks. I guess winning at poker night with the boys was too much; that’s why the tire had to go flat and make me pull over in the middle of the woods.”

“Poker night?” Dean risks chirping, eyebrows raised in sudden interest. He shuffles his feet the hell away from Sam’s to avoid getting kicked again. It ends up being a futile effort, ill-calculated, since Sam unashamedly decides to elbow him in the ribs instead.

“Ow,” Dean snarls at the sharp contact, furious eyes immediately pinning his brother down and promising one hell of a vendetta the moment the Porters leave. Sam just rolls his eyes at him, the fucker.

“You play?” Mike inquires, genuinely curious. He’d be more than glad to let Dean tag along next week if the young man will be in the mood.

“Oh, I play,” Dean practically purrs in glee. He’s being honest about his skill for once, knowing that Sam would strangle him if he tried to sell the kindly man the usual bullshit about being only ‘moderately good’.

“He’ll fleece you if you invite him,” Sam sighs in gentle warning and sags back into the cushions. That’s all the effort he can bring himself to make, leaving it up to the old man to decide his own fate.

“No worries. We play for chips, anyway,” Mike quips cheerfully, soon starting to laugh like a hyena when Dean’s face spoils and a frown so deep sets on his face that it ends up rivaling a toddler’s when broccoli turns up on the dinner plate. 

“Well, it’s decided, boy. Next Monday you’re with me. Sammy?” Mike offers, but Sam politely declines. “I’m his partner in crime when it comes to hustling pool, but I stay away from cards whenever I can,” he adds with a nervous smile, handing out the embarrassing info just to keep Mike in good spirits.

“Yeah, worst poker face I’d ever seen. He always ends up looking like he’s been holding for too long,” Dean beams, earning himself his second elbow-jab of the day, but he doesn’t mind this one as he did the first.

“Well, alright then,” Mike says. “So, what’s the next move?”

“You show us where it happened,” Sam explains, slapping his hands on his knees, feeling quite fidgety all of a sudden. “Then we take it from there, try and track the thing.”

The Porters share that trademarked look of couples who’d spent decades mixing up each other’s slippers and don’t feel the need to bother with words anymore. Soon after they start getting out of their sofas in unison, the speed and grace of that particular maneuver indicating multiple hip surgeries. Sam springs to his feet before either is even halfway there and offers a helping hand to Jennie, while Dean makes himself busy with being shooed away by Mike. Sam makes sure the frail woman keeps holding onto his elbow once she’s up on her feet, then they all head together towards the front door.

Stepping outside, Sam immediately notices that the sky has gone a bit murky while they were talking. It doesn’t look like pleasant weather’s ahead, even though the winds will need a bit more time to put on their muscle in order to start feeling like they could cleave flesh off the bone. There’s still birdsong to be heard over the bells and chimes on the rope that are starting to get annoying, but the cicadas have gone quiet, the silence they’d left behind feeling as prominent as the height of their screeching.

“That’s summer giving us notice, if you ask me.” Though his soles have already hit the gravel of the driveway, Sam hears Mike tell Dean sadly as they both stop on the top stair of the porch so that the older man could rest a bit. “We’ll might get a couple more weeks before it turns really sour, but that’s only if we’re lucky.”

“We don’t mind. We haven’t come here for the kayaking, anyway,” Dean babbles carelessly, only to figure out what he’d just admitted to when Sam turns to throw him the nastiest stink-eye Dean’s ever been on the receiving end of. The face he makes then resembles a puppy’s that’d just been threatened with a rolled-up newspaper.

“I wish I was young,” Mike continues, ignorant of Dean blanching like he’d seen the Reaper. “I would’ve given you a hand with the beast. But, you know, with only a few calls I could get my hands on any military-grade weapon you could think of. There anything you boys can think of that could help you get rid of our pest?”

If Sam had turned his head any faster, the motion would’ve given him whiplash. What he sees over his shoulder is Dean’s face lit up like a five-year-old’s on Christmas morning.

“We’re all good, but thank you,” he’s just in time to intercept a request for something fancy but useless that shoots missiles instead of proper were-killing ammo. Dammit, when will his brother learn?

“Gosh,” Jennie sighs next to him, ignoring the conversation behind her. Her tiny hand tightens around his bicep, “all of this is making me feel like I’m stuck in one of those novels my granddaughter reads.”

Sam chuckles fondly at that, resisting the urge to start listing off modern fantasy’s most common inaccuracies concerning the supernatural. It would be lunchtime already when he’d get close to finishing. When her walk comes to a sudden halt, though, Sam takes his eyes off the musical tree-line and looks down again to see the woman with her eyes closed in frustration. When she opens them, the color of rich black tea meets him, the lady saying to Sam in the most apologetic fashion humanely possible: “I forgot to write up that recipe for your brother.”

“You’ll do it some other time,” he says, the dimples she’s already fallen in love with showing. “Me and my brother aren’t going anywhere, I promise.”

The warmth of the smile she rewards him with reminds him again of the reason why he's still going through all this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Loved it? Hated it? A bit bored? Maybe intrigued? Lemme know! =D


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